The past week has seen Eclipse Legal Systems announce an in-house win from the new legal team at Network Homes as Rocket Lawyer launches in Europe via a joint venture with European legal publishing house Editions Lefebvre Sarrut and RBRO Solutions restructures its senior management team for the first time since it was founded in 2003.
In other news, Mayer Brown has launched a Brexit Impact Assessment Tool; and Cordery will now use LexisInteraction for the benefit of its compliance clients. In the United States, Scroll has launched a social media and blogging platform for lawyers and we highlight some of the vendors recognised for exceptional customer service in the ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey.
And in a new legal IT publication, RAVN has published a white paper looking at the application of artificial intelligence in the legal world.
UK
News first of an in-house win for Eclipse Legal Systems, which is implementing its Proclaim Case Management Software solution within the newly-formed in-house legal team at Network Homes, one of the country’s leading housing association developers.
Founded in 1974, Network Homes now manages over 20,500 homes throughout London and the Home Counties.
The legal team led by head of legal services Tabitha Kassem will use Proclaim CMS in order to streamline processes and help to reduce spend on external solicitor fees. Additionally, Proclaim will centralise all the team’s key information into one desktop application.
Proclaim’s Task Server tool will automate routine tasks, allowing the legal team to concentrate on providing a quality service.
Kassem said: “As one of the country’s leading housing associations, our in-house legal team needs to be as efficient as possible. With Proclaim, manual document production will be eliminated, ensuring fast processing and the removal of human error.”
Mayer Brown has developed an online solution that helps clients identify and prioritise the impact of Brexit on their business and creates a report on their risk profile.
The Brexit Impact Assessment Tool enables clients to identify areas of concern that are most relevant to their business, as the government begins to negotiate the terms of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. It ranks each issue by importance, impact and the effort required to address them. The tool then provides clients with a bespoke report on their risk profile.
Working in collaboration with in-house counsel and senior executives, Mayer Brown’s tool helps clients to determine the areas that require legal advice, call for significant resource investment and have the greatest potential impact on their business. The innovation also gives clients a single point of access to a range of Brexit advisers at the firm.
The circa 1,500 global law firm has a dedicated Brexit knowledge hub on its website, complete with written and audio insights on the legal and commercial implications of a British exit from the EU.
Cordery, a compliance advisory and solutions business launched by LexisNexis in 2014, is deploying customer relationship management solution Lexis InterAction for the benefit of its professional services firm clients.
InterAction will enable Cordery to record and analyse the preferences of its clients in order to create and deliver well-timed, relevant content on compliance hot topics such as the new EU General Data Protection Regulation and EU-US Privacy Shield.
InterAction will be integrated at the back-end with e-marketing solution, Vuture, to enable Cordery to disseminate content to clients.
“Our business is highly specialised; and regular, regulatory compliance-related insights form a key part of our strategy,” said Robert Sanderson, chief operating officer at Cordery.
The United States
Rocket Lawyer and Editions Lefebvre Sarrut (ELS), a leading European legal publishing company have announced a joint venture to launch Rocket Lawyer Europe.
Rocket Lawyer pioneered the electronic delivery of legal documentation, combined with advice from local lawyers, in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Now used by over 14 million small business, individual and family account holders, Rocket Lawyer Europe will now launch in France, Spain and the Netherlands, with plans to rapidly expand throughout Europe thereafter.
ELS brings more than 170 years of expertise serving European lawyers, government agencies and businesses as a major publisher of legal information. It joins Google Ventures, Salfort Privatbank (Switzerland) Morgan Stanley Ventures, August Capital (Silicon Valley), IGC (Sweden), Industry Ventures and Robert Smith (Vista Equity Partners) as Rocket Lawyer major investors.
Rocket Lawyer Europe will be led by Christophe Chevalley as general manager with Blandine Jugé appointed as the European project manager. Previously Chevalley was marketing director for two ELS companies, Dalloz and Editions Legislatives, while Jugé worked at CarriereJuridiques, where she helped to develop a French legal company in Luxembourg and Belgium.
RBRO Solutions, a global software solutions provider, has had an internal management restructure that sees co-chief executive officers John Russell and Howard Russell take on different roles.
Since the inception of the company in 2003 the Russells have operated as co-CEOs but as of 30 September, John will become chairman and Howard will take on the role of sole CEO.
The restructure is said to allow RBRO’s clients and partners to benefit from a more streamlined RBRO
“This change will facilitate a renewed focus on future innovation. Our global team will continue to deliver the services and solutions that have solidified our reputation for excellence,” said Howard Russell.
RBRO has created the role of chief operating officer and hired Dennis Croft to the senior executive team, reporting to Howard.
Croft was most recently the president and CEO of the Spark Regional Innovation Centre, which focused on advising over 750 clients in startups and growing technology companies in the areas of big data, wearable technology, enterprise software, small business solutions and mobile applications.
Scroll has launched a new social media and blogging platform for lawyers, where a director can create and manage social media for thousands of attorneys and employees with ‘just a few clicks’, while maintaining posts uniquely branded to each individual attorney.
Centrally created, firm-branded social media posts are automatically personalised with each attorney’s name, bio, video, resources and more, and links to the firm’s website.
Scroll says the new social media platform provides performance analytics and “the ability to incorporate an artificially intelligent topic-specific news feed that boosts search engine rankings for each attorney’s specific site.”
Other industry news
DocAuto has been recognised for their exceptional customer service by the InsideLegal’s Technology Purchasing Survey for the fourth year.
This survey, released at the annual ILTA Conference in National Harbor on Aug. 29th, was developed by ILTA and InsideLegal and distributed to 1,231 global ILTA member law firms.
DocAuto was one of 95 vendors to receive a mention for exceptional customer service.
Vendors that received three or more mentions were AAC; Acrowire; Aderant; Aurora North; Baker+Cadence Solutions; BEC Legal Systems; Bellefield Systems; BigHand; Bridgetech; CARM Consulting and Chrome River.
The full Technology Purchasing Survey can be found here: http://insidelegal.typepad.com/files/2016_ILTA_InsideLegal_Technology_Purchasing_Survey.pdf
New publications
RAVN has published a white paper looking at artificial intelligence in the legal world, incorporating commentary from professionals in the industry on how cognitive computing, AI systems and robots impact the legal ecosystem.
While the white paper is much more self-promotional than many, it takes a fairly interesting look at examples of AI in the legal sector – or “The AI reality in the legal world”.
It includes some commentary from the legal industry in the form of a discussion between Mike Potter, partner at Addleshaw Goddard; Stefan Winquist, CIO at Bech Bruun and Alexander Low, head of client development at Jones Lang Lasalle over how AI can impact a firm’s performance.
You can access the paper here: https://www.ravn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/RAVN-White-Paper-AI-in-the-Legal-World.pdf