The past week has brought news of a new chief marketing officer for kCura as it prepares to launch its new cloud-based Relativity offering, with hires elsewhere for Prosperoware and DocsCorp. Consilio has been awarded a U.S. patent for its Enhanced Bloomberg Chat Review solution, while we bring news of wins and deals for Encompass Verify and Thomson Reuters Elite; a high level Legal Procurement Forum in Australia; and industry updates from Aderant, Dentons and Quill Pinpoint.
Hires
kCura, developers of the e-discovery software Relativity, has appointed Lisa Arthur as chief marketing officer. Arthur joins the company as kCura prepares to launch RelativityOne, its new cloud-based offering, in early 2017.
RelativityOne will be a SaaS-delivered version of Relativity and Arthur brings more than 30 years of enterprise software marketing experience to kCura. Most recently, she spent five years as CMO of Teradata Applications, a publicly held company that provides software solutions in marketing technology, data warehousing, big data, and analytics. Arthur has also held marketing leadership roles at Aprimo, Akamai Technologies, and Oracle.
This is the latest big hire by kCura, which in April appointed Jason Ream, formerly of SolarWinds, as CFO. Last year, kCura received $125m minority investment from Iconiq Capital, to raise their level and pace of innovation within the e-discovery market.
Prosperoware has appointed Michael Stern, most recently regional sales director for WoltersKluwer ELM Solutions, as practice management specialist.
Stern brings more than 15 years of project management and legal business intelligence consulting in corporate and legal practices, including substantial expertise with Redwood Analytics where he focused on BI. His background is uniquely suited to facilitating the accelerating demand for Prosperoware’s Umbria technology. Before WoltersKluwer, Stern was an account executive at Aderant.
After nine years at Phoenix Business Solutions as commercial manager for APAC, Antony Wells this summer joined DocsCorp as senior account manager based in London. Wells, who transferred to Phoenix’ Australian arm in 2014, recently relocated from Australia to the UK and at DocsCorp will be managing key accounts in the UK and Ireland.
Product launches and updates
International eDiscovery provider Consilio has been awarded a U.S. patent for its Enhanced Bloomberg Chat Review solution.
With chat rooms featuring highly in many long running investigations and prosecutions, including the manipulation of FOREX, Consilio’s chat review solution accelerates and streamlines the review of multi-party chat transcript documents, including Instant Bloomberg (“Bloomberg Chat”) archives, for eDiscovery.
Launched in 2014, the Enhanced Chat Review solution provides a streamlined review experience that optimises workflows and minimizes risk of errors associated with large-scale reviews for financial services organizations. The solution allows reviewers to filter out irrelevant participants, companies, disclaimer noise and chat entry and exit event noise, which typically comprises more than 80% of chat transcripts.
“The innovation behind the Enhanced Chat Review solution is its ability to speed the review process by removing the irrelevant noise that burdens reviewers,” said Raj Chandrasekar, chief technology officer at Consilio.
Landmark Information Group, the land and property data specialists, has launched RiskView Commercial: the first ‘all-in-one’ environmental search to provide analysis on four key risks supported by an online interactive mapping tool to enable thorough pre-purchase risk analysis.
RiskView Commercial advises on Contaminated Land risk, Flood risk, Ground Stability and Energy & Infrastructure, in one report for the first time.
Wins and deals
UK
Wilkin Chapman has selected Encompass Verify for Law to support its recovery investigations.
The firm, which is ranked as the number one debt recovery provider in the East Midlands and is one of the largest law firms in Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire, will use Encompass’ product to increase efficiency when researching cases for clients.
Paul Bowden, business development solicitor from Wilkin Chapman said: “As a law firm we offer a one stop shop for recovery and insolvency. Our unique ‘resolution’ service begins with identification research, and Encompass Verify enables us to research and discover information relevant to asset realisation and, most importantly, communicate complex situations to clients in an easily understood visual chart.”
U.S.
Stearns Weaver Miller, has elected to transition from Thomson Reuters Elite’s sunsetted practice management system Enterprise and other workflow tools to Elite 3E.
“After a thorough evaluation, we determined that the single 3E solution offers superior functionality for both financial and practice management,” said Patrick Walsh, the firm’s controller. “We look forward to simplifying our technology infrastructure with a solution that can be tailored to meet our needs.”
Stearns Weaver Miller is a full-service law firm serving clients throughout Florida and nationwide, with offices in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Tallahassee.
Events
Australia
In a first for Australia, a forum dedicated solely to the topic of legal procurement will tour Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, hosted by Lawcadia in association with beaton and US-based Buying Legal Council.
The Legal Procurement Forum 2016 will be held under Chatham House Rules, with Warwick Walsh, Lawcadia CEO and founder commenting: “We felt that it was essential for the forum to offer a safe environment for openly sharing experiences and to engage in candid discussions.
“It’s a relatively new topic and can be very sensitive, so we have made this a private, closed room event with no representation from external legal services providers.”
Guests will meet with leaders in strategic legal procurement, including guest speakers Dr Silvia Hodges Silverstein, executive director of the Buying Legal Council; partners from beaton including George Beaton; and Jonathan Benson, Australia head of legal at The Royal Bank of Scotland.
For more information on the Legal Procurement Forum 2016, visit https://legalprocurementforum.com/
Industry news
Aderant has relaunched its Think Tank blog, which provides insights into the business of law, change management and leveraging technology to help improve your law firm business.
The blog will post new content on the first and third Wednesday of each month. To subscribe click this link: http://bit.ly/2dVqNd2
Dentons has formally launched the Nextlaw Global Referral Network, which already has 283 member firms providing services to clients in 160 countries.
On its launch day (5 October), the network had more than 18,600 lawyers around the globe, with more to join in the coming months. The network utilises a proprietary technology platform that enables member law firms to refer clients to the law firm most appropriate to their needs.
Jeff Modisett, Nextlaw Global Referral Network CEO said, “The numbers speak for themselves. In less than five months since we made our initial announcement, we have attracted 283 top quality independent law firms to join forces with us. Because we don’t limit geographies to one firm who pays to play, and because we don’t charge annual fees, for the first time ever the client knows it is getting the right lawyer, not just the firm that paid to be in the referral network.”
A list of members of Nextlaw Global Referral Network can be found at www.nextlawnetwork.com
And Middlesbrough-based payroll and book keeping bureau, Quill Pinpoint, last week (7 October) presented a cheque for £6,145 to the Alzheimer’s Society from donations generated from its recent Hadrian’s Wall fundraiser to an official Alzheimer’s Society regional representative.
Julian Bryan, Quill’s Managing Director, commented: “We chose the Alzheimer’s Society as this year’s main beneficiary because it’s a charity close to our hearts. Although Quill’s a young company – in terms of the average age of our employees – our workforce can relate to the cause because many of us have parents and grandparents with the disease which means we see for ourselves the devastating impact of this debilitating condition first hand. We’re so pleased to have raised over £6k, and we’re thankful to our employees for their impressive fundraising efforts and everyone who sponsored us on our Hadrian’s Wall walk.”