Wolters Kluwer’s new partnership with PwC USA for claims litigation caused a stir on social media last week, in a legal tech week that also saw an Am Law 200 win for BigHand, a new California client for iManage, and a win for UK practice management software provider Eclipse Legal Systems. There are promotions and new appointments for Jaeva Management Services, Opus 2 International and EDRM (electronic discovery reference model), as we also bring you industry news from Janders Dean, a new Digital Skills Award from the European Commission that is open to any business to apply, and our job and event of the week.
Wins and deals
U.S.
Wolters Kluwer’s new relationship with PwC USA combines its ELM Solution’s claims litigation technology platform with PwC’s claims management consulting and services, to provide insurance claims clients with deeper insights by “creating a more holistic ecosystem approach.”
“Increasingly, legal professionals in the insurance industry seek holistic technology solutions that can work together, while eliminating unnecessary complexity and costs,” said Glenn Paredes, executive vice president and general manager at Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions. “By collaborating with other leading industry providers like PwC, we are better positioned to integrate outside technology, enhance our clients’ insight into their operations, and deliver a world class customer experience.”
Am Law 200 law firm Clark Hill PLC has completed its deployment of BigHand Digital Dictation to over 300 attorneys across 12 North American offices. The firm, which appears on the Top 100 Client Service Law Firms in America list, currently employs 62 of the ‘best lawyers in America’, who are now using the BigHand technology.
The fast-growing firm, which in 2013 merged with Thorp Reed & Armstrong and at the start of 2016 was joined by Chicago firm Martin, Brown, Sullivan, Roadman & Hartnett, conducted a post-merger review of its internal systems, which included two digital dictation providers, with BigHand coming out on top.
Thomas Surnick, systems analyst and project manager at Clark Hill said: “We decided that BigHand’s voice solution was right for our business because unlike the other solution, it had always been completely trouble free. Today, our users are very happy – they find the BigHand applications intuitive and don’t need much training to get up and running. They benefit from greater functionality and management is able to use it to monitor staff capacity and reallocate resources when needed, which was just not possible with the other solution.”
The Mogin Law Firm, P.C. — a California-based firm that specialises in competition litigation including antitrust, unfair competition, trade secret, complex business and investment cases — has selected iManage Cloud for its work product management needs. After evaluating offerings from multiple vendors, including NetDocuments, the firm was won over by several different aspects of the iManage Cloud solution, including its flexibility and functionality.
To assist in the migration from its current solution to iManage Cloud, The Mogin Law Firm is working with LANSolutions LLC, a provider of strategic managed services for businesses in California and Hawaii, and a long-time implementation partner for iManage.
You can read iManage’s full press release on our Legal IT Newswire.
UK
Eclipse is implementing its Proclaim PMS solution at Stenfield Solicitors, a niche practice specialising in debt collection and dispute resolution.
Proclaim incorporates a comprehensive accounting and financial toolset with an out-of-the-box debt recovery case management system. Fee earners will benefit from a completely centralised desktop application and integration with the County Court Bulk Centre, which enables staff to submit claims through the Secure Data Transfer portal.
Mahesh Patel, principal of Stenfield Solicitors, said: “Due to the nature of our work, we need a legal software solution that can minimise the manual processes associated with debt collection and enable our team to focus on recovering our clients’ money as quickly and efficiently as possible. With Proclaim, we can significantly simplify claim submission procedures, ensuring a truly streamlined process, as well as higher levels of accuracy.”
Appointments
UK
Specialist legal sector consultancy service provider, Jaeva Management Services has promoted Jane Taylor to the newly-formed position of client experience manager.
The new client-facing role has become available as a result of Jaeva’s rapid growth and diversifying client base.
Taylor’s main responsibility will be to devise content, specify the approach to delivery and manage the quality of training provision. She’ll report direct to Jaeva’s directors, Nicola Moore-Miller and Jo-Anne Wild. Taylor joined Jaeva in 2015 as legal practice management software trainer.
US
Opus 2 International has appointed trial technology and litigation support expert Cheryl Wilson-Griffin to the role of client success manager. Wilson-Griffin brings a wealth of knowledge to the role, with over 14 years’ experience leading legal and litigation support operations for AmLaw 100 law firms including Mayer Brown and Kirkland Ellis LLP in Chicago.
In her previous role at Mayer Brown, Wilson-Griffin oversaw the successful deployment of trial offices and technology, experiencing the Opus 2’s Magnum tech enabled trial platform first hand.
“In all the years I have been working in this field I had never seen so much technology and so many services – court reporting, real-time audio, language translation, remote streaming and video-conferencing deployed so successfully. Opus 2 Magnum enabled a level of collaboration between attorneys that was unparalleled,” said Wilson-Griffin.
Thomas Hnatowski has been named director of EDRM at Duke Law School’s Center for Judicial Studies. EDRM, now a part of Duke Law School after it was acquired in August 2016, provides standards for the recovery and discovery and of digital data.
Hnatowski joins EDRM from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, most recently as chief of the Magistrate Judges Division. In that role he was responsible for day-to-day administration and support of the federal magistrate judges system.
“Hnatowski said: “Rapid data growth challenges our ability to deliver — to borrow a phrase — just, speedy and inexpensive resolutions in litigation. In the face of rapid change it’s critical that we foster education and cooperation between judges, attorneys and e-discovery technology and service providers. One of my goals with EDRM is to increase interaction between judges, litigators and e-discovery experts in order to advance standards and guidelines that will lead to more efficient administration of justice.”
Industry news
International legal industry advisors Janders Dean has confirmed its involvement in the 2017 LawWithoutWalls (LWOW) programme as an official topic sponsor.
LWOW is an international program bringing 95+ students from 30 law and business schools around the world together with academic, lawyer or entrepreneur mentors with a view to creating a legal startup that creates a real solution to a problem facing the legal marketplace.
“It is an honour to be part of this phenomenal initiative, one that continues to be the leader in developing innovative solutions to social and corporate issues through their unique model of global collaboration” said Justin North, founder of Janders Dean.
“This year we were fortunate to have the LWOW teams present to our clients and our networks at both the London and the Sydney Legal Horizons events. Their energy and passion for both the LWOW community, and the wider drive for changing the ways the legal industry thinks about its role in society, is infectious. Michelle and Erika and the entire LWOW community are simply inspirational.” said North.
As part of their involvement, Janders Dean will be collaboratively developing a 2017 LWOW topic to be addressed by the participants. Other topic sponsors include Microsoft, Eversheds, Lockheed Martin, BUPA, Barclays, LegalZoom, UnitedLex, Diversity Lab and InterLaw.
The European Commission is inviting nominations for a new European Digital Skills Award, which looks at projects which encourage people to improve their digital skills. The intention is to identify projects that can inspire others to take similar actions all over Europe.
The Commission is looking for projects that have achieved a significant and measureable impact and should have the possibility to be replicable and scalable in other regions or sectors. The award is open to all types of projects irrespective of the location or the type of organisation involved, including within business.
Winners and finalists will be selected in four award categories: digital skills for all – developing digital skills to enable all citizens to be active in our digital society; digital skills for the labour force – developing digital skills for the digital economy such as upskilling and reskilling workers; more and better trained ICT professionals in Europe – developing high level digital skills for ICT professionals in all industry sectors; and digital skills in education – transforming teaching and learning of digital skills in a lifelong learning perspective, including the training of teachers.
The best projects will be awarded the European Digital Skills Award 2016 on 1 December 2016 in Brussels by Günther H. Oettinger, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, during the launch conference of the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition.
The deadline for filling in the application form is 30 October 2016.
Job of the week
Lewis Paige is looking for a law firm IT operations manager for a Central London law firm with a salary of £75k to £85k to direct and oversee the infrastructure, service desk and training teams on a day-to-day basis.
The manager will assist the head of IT in ensuring that the operational IT teams deliver technology solutions which support the evolving business requirements of the firm.
See our jobs page for more details – don’t forget, posting jobs is free.
Event of the week
The Ark Group is holding its Risk Management and Compliance for Law Firms 2016 conference on 6 December, with a whole host of speakers including Chris Handford, director of regulatory policy at the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
See our events page for more details of this and other events in the legal sector. You guessed it, posting events is free.