The story that created the most reaction last week was the news that Tiger Eye has been selected by DocAuto as its EMEA iManage strategic partner in place of Tikit, which has ended all support, maintenance and sales for the document management system leader. Tikit will see out its existing iManage sales contracts but going forward Tiger Eye will take on new DocAuto iManage EMEA business.
Our headline – DocAuto selects Tiger Eye as EMEA iManage partner to replace Tikit – caused concern at Tikit and DocAuto that users will think that Tiger Eye is going to immediately step into Tikit’s existing sales arrangements, leading to a lively online exchange of views with DocAuto’s managing director David Kiefer.
So, in case you did think that, we’ve added the update: “For the avoidance of doubt, Tiger Eye can’t just unilaterally step into an ongoing binding contractual arrangement with Tikit – any questions on English law, come and see us after class.”
Wins and deals
Tikit also last week announced a record first quarter for its mid-market sales having secured “several major new business wins” for its flagship practice and case management software, P4W and associated products, including investments from Sternberg Reed, Marriott Harrison, Glover Priest and a NetDocuments win with Atticus Legal.
Sternberg Reed, East London based solicitors, has made a six figure investment in P4W and Glover Priest also invested in P4W, while Tikit said it has also seen a rise in firms investing in P4W alongside NetDocuments, with firms such as Marriott Harrison running both systems to enhance mobility. The first quarter record announcement was specifically about mid-market deals rather than the entire business.
In other wins, last week saw the announcement from Aderant that Am Law 100 firm Proskauer Rose has elected to move from Elite Enterprise to Aderant Expert, with implementation of the practice management system expected to begin immediately.
The 725-plus lawyer New York-headquartered firm selected Expert after a competitive pitch and a proof of concept that is understood to have begun in the summer of 2016.
The win follows Elite’s announcement in 2016 that it will not update Enterprise after Q2 2016 and bug fixes will end on 31 December 2022, in the expectation that firms will move to its flagship PMS 3E. US moves away from Enterprise to Aderant Expert this year include New York white shoe elite firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, in a deal announced in May.
ROSS Intelligence has won Sedgwick LLP as a client. The San Francisco-headquartered law firm will apply ROSS Intelligence’s artificial intelligence research solution – which enables its lawyers to ask questions and receive answers on defined topics – to its Creditors’ Rights and Bankruptcy group.
“We are excited to be on the cutting edge of new technology to provide superior and more efficient service to our clients,” said Mike Healy, Sedgwick chair of the firm. “Our firm’s Creditors’ Rights and Bankruptcy Practice is already using AI to enhance our legal research, making it faster to analyse complex legal issues and to discover relevant ‘connect-the-dots’ information that otherwise might go unnoticed.”
In a major double win for DocsCorp, two of the world’s largest ‘Big Four’ accounting firms will deploy its document comparison and metadata removal software within their tax, legal services and compliance teams globally.
The two separate wins will see the undisclosed global accounting firms, representing a total over 150,000 new users, roll out compareDocs for document comparison and cleanDocs for metadata removal. The deals, which are two of the largest in the company’s history, are said by DocsCorp to be the result of extensive product testing and pilot programs. DocsCorp developers worked with internal teams at each firm to build the applications into their existing systems.
Elsewhere, DocsCorp announced that Christian & Barton has replaced its legacy metadata cleaning tool with cleanDocs from DocsCorp. The Virginia-based firm also added contentCrawler for automated, 24/7 OCR processing and compression. The applications integrate with the firm’s OpenText eDOCS DMS.
Christian & Barton were already long-time DocsCorp users. The civil practice firm has been using pdfDocs to create, manage, and collate PDFs, and compareDocs to find changes between business- critical documents since 2008.
Prosperoware last week announced the successful integration of Prosperoware Milan Add-on features with iManage Cloud for Am Law 50 firm, Baker Botts. The firm selected Milan iManage Add-ons as part of its initial iManage deployment in 2013 to enable matter centricity, ease administration, and improve the iManage end-user experience. Milan’s functionality was considered crucial to the cloud environment as the firm achieved success in a remarkable 90-day migration.
Prosperoware also last week announced the release of Prosperoware Milan Import for NetDocuments. Following strong customer demand for Milan Add-Ons to enhance operational efficiency of the NetDocuments document management systems (DMS), Milan Import will help firms simplify and streamline the import of content from a variety of sources including zip files, File Shares, and other DMSs.
This release of Milan Import comes at the one-year mark of a successful partnership between NetDocuments and Prosperoware that was launched with the availability of Milan Confidentiality Management in time for ILTACON 2016.
LEAP, a cloud-based practice management software provider, announced a partnership with The Cashroom to provide outsourced cashier, management accounting and payroll services. The Cashroom will provide these services to LEAP client firms to increase efficiency, reduce costs and ensure full compliance with all Solicitors Accounts Rules.
LockPath announced it has been included in Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for IT Risk Management Solutions.
LockPath was one of 10 vendors evaluated in Gartner Inc.’s report, published June 29, by Gartner analysts Khushbu Pratap, Jeffrey Wheatman and Matthew Stamper. The report, which aims to help organizations evaluate IT risk management (ITRM) software solutions, recognized LockPath as a visionary in the space for its Keylight Platform.
Alphaserve Technologies, a global provider of managed IT, cloud and cybersecurity services, has introduced a version of its popular artificial intelligence consulting service for the legal market. The company offers data science as a service to improve law firm business processes, leveraging its own intellectual property including ITIL-based processes, a proprietary tool and more than 200 experts around the globe.
And the Australian government has granted a $500,000 innovation award to legal technology startup thedocyard, which provides a one-stop-shop for deal management, as part of a wider push to transition the economy from one based on mining and resources to ideas and technology.
The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science has committed to deliver the funding under the Accelerating Commercialisation element of the Entrepreneurs’ Programme, which is designed to help cover the costs of taking “novel products, processes and services to market.”
thedocyard was founded in mid-2015 by CEO Stuart Clout (pictured), formerly a partner at Colins Biggers & Paisley, who wanted to come up with a solution that incorporated all of the workflows associated with corporate and commercial transactions from start to finish in a single solution. It launched in Australia in early 2016 focusing mainly on law firms and large corporates.
Financial results
Allen & Overy has announced record figures for the year ended 30 April 2017, with revenue up by 16% to £1.52bn and profit per equity partner up by 26% to £1.51m, which it notably credits in part to its alternative delivery models achieving their strongest year yet.
A&O said that alternative delivery models such as online services business aosphere and digital derivatives compliance system MarginMatrix have “added significantly” to the firm’s bottom line.
Global Managing Partner Andrew Ballheimer commented: “We are always challenging ourselves to ensure our client proposition is fit for purpose in a fast changing world and this has been the driver for our innovative solutions. What this last year demonstrates is that these innovations are increasingly attractive to clients as well as ensuring the future sustainability of the firm.”
As first published in the June Legal IT Insider and up online last week, Phoenix Business Solutions has filed its 2015-2016 financial results, which show that revenue is up by 11.5% to £14.1m but profit is down by £93,699 and net cashflow down by £1.2m to £117,502 as the company pursues global and strategic expansion.
The 2015-16 period saw Phoenix open a new office in Frankfurt and take on around 13 new members of staff. Instead of taking on debt, it funded the expansion through its own funds but expects to look for external investment in the next year or so to accelerate its growth plans.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, CEO Jason Petrucci said: “Our revenue for the period ending July 2016 was up by 11% and we continue to grow year-on-year. That growth is attributable to strong sales performance particularly in the US, UK and our new office in Germany.
“We opened a new office in Frankfurt in January 2016, as part of our global expansion plans, and we are delighted with its progress. This investment has been entirely funded from our own resources and working capital.”
Hires and launches
Keesal, Young & Logan (KYL) has hired Twitter eDiscovery and litigation operations head Wendy Riggs and launched a new Compliance, Operations and Data Control Advisory (CODA) division.
A Certified eDiscovery Specialist and seasoned legal operations professional, Riggs joins the Long Beach headquartered firm as a senior advisor.
KYL developed CODA to formalize ongoing efforts to help clients adapt to an increasingly complex regulatory and security environment against the backdrop of rapidly evolving technology. At KYL, Wendy and the CODA division will partner with clients to identify and prioritize new opportunities to reduce risk, increase efficiency and ensure compliance.
Cybersecurity updates
Our ‘highly recommended’ comment of last week looks at recent ransomware attacks, which point to fundamental issues that are inherent to the design of the Windows operating system, corporate intranets, and the Internet. Through this lens, mobile operating systems and, in particular, iOS are a seismic upgrade in protecting devices and networks from this type of attack, Seth Hallem, CEO of Mobile Helix says.
Commenting on the article, Andy Stokes said: “While I’d agree that iOS is better by design (in this respect at least), it’s never really scaled to suit the data repository side of things. So essentially any iOS device using data or documents from a repository will keep on ‘working’, but to deliver data and items which are still vulnerable on the back end. ‘Hey, my iPad works fine, I just can’t get to anything on Windows Server.’”
Cybersecurity is also the focus of a new guide published by the Law Society of Scotland, which sets out key risk areas, the potential impact and consequences of a cybersecurity breach and what solicitors can do to help significantly reduce the likelihood of a successful attack on their business. The Law Society’s Guide to Cybersecurity also highlights the need for a well thought out response and disaster recovery plan in the event of a successful cyber attack.
Bot news
Causing much excitement across the wires, computer science student Joshua Browder, founder of DoNotPay, announced on 12 July that his IBM Watson-based chatbot will cover 1,000 legal queries in 100 categories across the US and the UK.
Visitors to DoNotPay can express in natural language what their problem is (the list could be long) and will be directed to the relevant assistant, which will generate a document to be sent to the relevant recipient.
Browder’s mission to help make consumer law accessible to all began with parking tickets and has quickly grown exponentially. He told The Law Society Gazette: “I started DoNotPay two years ago to fight my own parking tickets and became an accidental witness to how lawyers are exploiting human misery,’ Browder said. ‘From discrimination in Silicon Valley to the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London, it seems that the only people benefiting from injustice are a handful of lawyers. I hope that DoNotPay, by helping with these issues and many more, will ultimately give everyone the same legal power as the richest in society.”
To submit your latest news contact caroline.hill@liti.co.uk