Back to school with a bang, and we bring you a truly global post-ILTA legal IT news roundup, stripped of the waffle that you don’t have time to read.
United Kingdom
Hugely profitable litigation boutique Stewarts Law has successfully migrated to Thomson Reuters Elite’s flagship practice management system 3E from its legacy TRE Envision platform, following an extensive market review.
The UK top 60 firm, which in 2015 generated a profit per equity partner of just under £1.3m, now has 250 fee-earners across offices in London and Leeds.
The firm’s transition marks a total of five go-lives by a UK firm in the past four months for 3E.
Leading City firm Macfarlanes has selected Prosperoware’s Milan InfoGov comprehensive confidentiality management platform, to replace its legacy ethical wall solution.
Milan IG’s modern architecture was designed to compartmentalise data and provide powerful self-service capabilities to solve today’s firms’ security challenges and improve productivity. Its extensive feature set also includes more robust ethical wall functionality than legacy, single-purpose solutions.
Andrew Powell, Head of IT at Macfarlanes, comments, “Today’s security challenges for law firms are well-known, and Milan InfoGov puts our firm on the leading edge of satisfying our clients’ needs for confidentiality while providing for the proper workflow to allow our professionals to do their jobs.”
London-based litigation support group Legastat will now be offering its government and law firm clients Recommind’s Axcelerate Cloud platform as part of its managed services offering.
As a growing business with a strong footprint in Government, thanks to its place on the CCS framework for eDisclosure and Hard Copy Review Services, Legastat has outgrown its current systems, and is partnering with Recommind in order to facilitate additional growth and further expand its reach without needing to build its own infrastructure.
“By adding Axcelerate to our toolkit, Legastat further enhances its review capabilities, incorporating predictive coding, NLP searching, and scanning & printing – an all-round service,” said Casian Sala, managing director at Legastat.
Morecrofts Solicitors, one of Liverpool’s oldest family law solicitors, has selected BigHand’s task delegation tool, BigHand Now, to increase the visibility of administration tasks across teams.
The firm will be using BigHand Now in all five offices across Merseyside to delegate tasks such as booking appointments, photocopying, and preparing cheques for clients.
Craig Gilfoyle, ICT manager at Morecrofts Solicitors said: “At the moment we have no visibility over the tasks being done and the ones being left outstanding. We are using emails and shared inboxes to delegate tasks which can end up in the duplication of work or work being missed, something that is frustrating for both the secretarial support and administration teams. With BigHand Now, we expect complete visibility over the entire process.”
National dispersed law firm Setfords Solicitors is targeting would-be consultant lawyers using a 55-second online advert, released today (5 September), which is being promoted on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as well as on the company’s recruitment website www.consultantsolicitor.co.uk.
Altia Solutions, the Glasgow-based investigation software firm, has acquired ABM United Kingdom – provider of software for law enforcement and intelligence sectors around the world. Altia Solutions will now embark on a comprehensive customer-led development programme to further tailor the combined services and products of the enlarged business.
The acquisition marks the most significant expansion for Altia – whose clients include every police force in the UK and government departments including HMRC – since its inception in 2002. The combined business will double the size of Altia Solutions while retaining the staff and operations at the Glasgow HQ and at ABM’s Nottingham base.
ABM United Kingdom Ltd supplies covert investigation management software to the majority of UK police forces as well as forces and investigation authorities in Canada and Australia.
United States
iManage has announced the release of iManage Work 9.4, a ground-up reimagining of its core document and email management solution.
“In technology, you sometimes have to literally rip up the old playbook and write a new one and that’s what we’ve done,” said Dan Carmel, iManage chief marketing officer. “iManage Work 9.4 represents a complete rethinking of our product. We focused entirely on understanding end-user desires and translating that into an experience that is unlike anything in the market today. This is a new user experience for the new professional. iManage Work 9.4 has the simplicity of consumer services like Amazon, and presents the user with powerful new views and analytics about their information that saves time, alerts users to important changes easily and streamlines getting work done – all delivered with enterprise security, governance, and scalability on a modern, web-scale platform.”
Key aspects of iManage Work 9.4 include a responsive interface so users have the same experience whether on a phone, tablet, or desktop; search placed at the front and center as it is in the likes of Amazon; and analytics that help the software anticipate user needs and wants. Work 9.4 also has a home page dashboard that provides each professional with a snapshot of all documents and emails that have been added or changed across all projects they are working on.
iManage Work 9.4 is notably designed to need zero training. The system tracks user actions and, based on where the user navigates, builds custom help topics for that user. Help is available in mobile, tablet and desktop views so users are never left on their own. Short video clips can be added to help items for more guidance.
Druva, a leader in cloud data protection and information management, and Exterro, a preferred provider of software specifically designed for in-house legal teams, today announced a new integration that greatly simplifies and reduces the cost of the eDiscovery process.
The new solution enables legal teams to easily administer and manage legal holds directly from Exterro’s Platform while leveraging Druva inSync’s legal hold APIs to seamlessly collect, preserve and ingest dispersed enterprise data from endpoints and cloud applications into its platform.
The innovative cloud-to-cloud solution enables legal teams to utilise a single platform for eDiscovery while ensuring no data on legal hold travels over unprotected networks, safeguards the chain of custody and significantly reduces the risk of data spoliation.
World Software Corporation and Workshare have enhanced their partnership to bring secure collaboration to Worldox customers. Branded Worldox Connect, powered by Workshare, the new product will allow documents to be shared securely outside the organization while maintaining control of the documents within the Worldox Email and Document Management System.
Features include the ability to sync your important Worldox files or matters for on-the-go use on any mobile device and protect your outbound content by automatically removing sensitive information and comments. Users can also collaborate with their customers on shared documents for more efficient review cycle and remotely wipe sensitive firm data from any connected mobile device.
Ray Zwiefelhofer, president of World Software Corporation, said: “Workshare has a strong heritage servicing the confidential sharing requirements of the leading legal and professional services firms. We selected Workshare due to their unparalleled capability of not only integrating into every point of file sharing, but also due to their unique meta-driven security model, which lifts the solution well beyond the competition. The bundle will help our customers to drive productivity savings for end users and file security for the business.”
NetDocuments has announced that it will extend its Microsoft integration supporting Microsoft Flow, a new SaaS offering in Office 365 for automating workflow across a growing number of applications and cloud services.
NetDocuments’ Microsoft Flow announcement follows Microsoft’s selection and inclusion of NetDocuments into its exclusive cloud storage provider program, and is the latest example of increased collaboration and integration with Microsoft Office 365. This integration enables an individual to securely login and create/edit/save content simply from within a web browser or iOS device, eliminating the need for either the local installation of Office, or being forced to save contents in OneDrive.
Elevate Services has announced a partnership with legal technology company Everlaw to deliver next-generation electronic discovery and review. The offering combines Elevate’s global document review services with Everlaw’s lightning fast, intuitive, cloud e-discovery technology platform to provide clients with industry-leading efficiency, user experience, and cost predictability.
Team chat and collaboration hub ThreadKM has partnered with iManage, bringing documents secured in iManage Work directly into live conversations.
With many lawyers feeling overwhelmed by email, ThreadKM helps legal teams to engage in real-time, matter-centric discussions; manage workflows using a visual task board; and share new files, access and link to files secured in iManage.
“Collaboration at law firms is moving into new messaging channels like texting and team chat,” says Dan Hauck, CEO at ThreadKM. “Law firms and departments need a solution that supports their document management platform to ensure file security and promote information governance. That’s why ThreadKM and iManage together are a perfect fit.”
Intapp has announced the certification of four services partners. The latest Intapp services partners to achieve certification are Harriss Wagner in Australia, certified on Intapp Open; Report Factory in Australia, certified on Intapp Flow and Intapp Integrate; Stickleback Technologies in the United Kingdom, certified on Intapp Flow, Intapp Integrate and Intapp Open; and Legal IT Partners in the US, certified on Intapp Flow, Intapp Integrate and Intapp Open.
To date, Intapp services partners have completed projects at 110 firms, with more than 240 projects currently underway.
“Since launching our certification program, we’ve received very positive feedback from our customers. Firms appreciate knowing that the services partners they are working with have been formally trained and tested on their skills and knowledge of Intapp software, while our partners benefit from the ability to more effectively market their Intapp-specific expertise,” said Brian Lynch, director, services partner program, Intapp.
American LegalNet (ALN) has announced the planned release of a newly redesigned reporting system for its eDockets court-rules-based calendaring and docketing systems software.
eDockets reporting will now incorporate the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Reporting Tool to provide many new benefits including greater flexibility, accessibility and power in reporting.
New eDockets reporting highlights include: drilldown data reporting; user-friendly interface; subscription-based delivery of reports on specific dates; and easy export to common file formats including HTML, PDF, CSV, XML and TIFF. Complete rendering of reports is available in Microsoft Office Word and Excel.
UnitedLex has appointed as vice president Katherine Kawamoto, a former vice president of the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) and a recognised industry authority on corporate contract management. Kawamoto will work to support and expand UnitedLex’s growing legal business solutions and digital contracting solutions groups.
Davis Wright Tremaine has been awarded ‘Innovative Law Firm of the Year’ for the second year in a row by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) – the first time a firm has received the accolade twice.
DWT’s director of technology solutions, Jeff Sabado, was also named ILTA’s 2016 “IT Professional of the Year” for his work on DWT De Novo projects – its dedicated innovation and consultation team.
Canada
Kira Systems has launched Kira Quick Study 2.0, a major upgrade to its proprietary technology that identifies clauses and other metadata from contracts and related documents. The upgrade makes Kira even faster at learning to identify new clauses, names, dates and other values. Kira employs a wide array of advanced machine learning techniques in order to achieve high accuracy, often with only a few dozen examples.
Canadian law firm Taylor McCaffrey has selected Contentworker by Formpipe as its document and email management solution.
Contentworker Document Management is built for law firms and corporate legal. It gives Taylor McCaffrey a matter centric and fully integrated document and email management solution in SharePoint.
South Africa
Exigent and Deloitte South Africa have entered into a partnership to deliver a premium full-service eDiscovery product to clients globally.
The partnership will provide a ‘one stop’ solution for law firms, corporations and institutions seeking eDiscovery and data management services.
“We see this partnership as an enhancement to our eDiscovery data processing and hosting capabilities providing an end-to-end solution whereby Exigent’s legal process outsourcing expertise in document review will complete the cycle” said Clayton Thomopoulos, Deloitte director: risk advisory Southern Africa.
Australia
GlobalX Legal Solutions has announced its entry into Australia’s small to mid-firm market with a cloud-based workflow solution, Matter Centre.
Built in collaboration with conveyancers, Matter Centre represents affordable, scalable software for conveyancing firms of all size.
“Industry members have been frustrated by the lack of alternatives in the conveyancing software market for a long time,” said GlobalX CEO Peter Maloney, adding: “So, at GlobalX, we applied over 20 years’ industry experience, and the latest in customisation, cloud and integration tech’ to build Australia’s next-gen conveyancing solution.”
A recent survey of over 300 legal professionals by GlobalX found that lawyers and conveyancers think access to innovation and greater flexibility in their working life would improve their work-life balance more than increased pay.
Industry News
The National Society for Legal Technology (NSLT) has launched a Legal Technology Certification, in partnership with TutorPro.
The certification covers 13 of the key legal software programs: CaseMap; Concordance; Excel 2013; FileSite 9; LiveNote 9; Nuance Power PDF; Outlook 2013; PowerPoint 2013; Sanction; TimeMap; Trial Director; Word 2013; and Workshare 9. The certification will be delivered through eLearning in an online portal. The eLearning courseware is TutorPro courseware and the portal is powered by the TutorPro LMS.
LTC4, meanwhile, has announced the official release to its members of its much anticipated eDiscovery/eDisclosure Core Competency (ECC) Learning Plan following the peer review announced at LegalTech earlier in the year.
Designed to assess legal professionals’ understanding of eDiscovery, the LTC4 ECC Learning Plan is a competency curriculum created by the LTC4 ECC Learning Pod, a team of U.S. and U.K. based eDiscovery thought leaders.
Inspired by the globally accepted eDiscovery framework of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), the ECC Learning plan provides a practical, workflow-based scenario approach to assess knowledge of eDiscovery/eDisclosure areas including Identification, Preservation, Collection, Processing, Review, Analysis and Production. The ECC Learning Plan assesses two standards of competency – competent and expert.