Catch up on all our latest stories and comments in brief as well as wins and deals for DocsCorp, HighQ, Zylpha and Lexsoft, which has been selected by Womble Bond Dickinson for its knowledge management solution T3.
“Our partners were our guinea pigs”: Eversheds Sutherland launches crowdsourcing ideas app
Eversheds Sutherland has become the latest law firm to embrace crowdsourcing for ideas, rolling out innovation platform IdeaDrop across its 66 offices in 32 countries. IdeaDrop is a mobile and web app developed to help capture and curate ideas from employees.
“Following our combination in 2017, we have been looking for a platform that enabled everyone in the firm to collaborate, no matter where they are. And specifically, a collaboration tool that enabled us to implement the good ideas that flow from that,” said Susan Chick, the digital programme manager responsible for the project. “This isn’t just about the lawyers. It is about everyone in the business. We don’t believe there is a hierarchy on good ideas.”
Chick believes that the most exciting ideas that will be generated from the platform will be those that directly impact clients. “The small, incremental changes may well be inward looking. But the really big, revolutionary changes will be those that affect the way we work with clients.”
IdeaDrop was initially piloted with partners in June. “Our partners were our guinea pigs, which was interesting,” Chick said. “We learned a lot from that process. In particular, the need to create specific roles amongst our people.”
Read more here
Trending… NetDocuments acquires deal management application Closing Room
During its ndElevate customer and partner user conference in Utah last week, NetDocuments announced the acquisition of Closing Room, a deal management application developed by Chapman and Cutler to streamline transactional closing processes.
Closing Room enables users to create checklists during a deal and track documents. At closing it automatically generates a compiled bookmarked closing binder, enabling users to access and organise documents post-closing.
“Closing Room, designed for lawyers, by lawyers, has been stamped ‘safe, valued and proven’ and is a strategic addition to the NetDocuments platform,” said Josh Baxter, NetDocuments CEO.
“The acquisition serves to extend our company’s rich partner and product eco-system that is solving for the unique challenges of the legal industry.”
Commenting on the story on legaltechnology.com was Bill Lipner who said: “Wait.. developed by a law firm?! Did I read that correctly? Hats off to Chapman and Cutler. This is what we mean when we talk about law firm innovation!” To read more click here and to go to comments on LinkedIn use this link: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6466294191025586176
We bring you more on Closing Room later today (12 November).
BCLP launches ML-based fixed fee early case assessment service
Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) on 6 November launched a fixed price early case assessment service that packages up its existing in-house forensic capability and machine learning technology with a legal advice wrapper spread across its London and Manchester offices.
Developed by BCLP’s litigation and corporate risk team in conjunction with its new global innovation group, Clear/Cut leverages eDiscovery technology used in-house such as Ringtail and other non-proprietary tools.
Clients will be required to provide around five gigabytes of data, which will be reviewed using Ringtail, after which legal guidance will be provided to help them evaluate whether to proceed.
The service is particularly targeted at cases that are not ‘bet the farm’ but in a difficult middle ground where what’s at stake is of value but also potentially costly to pursue.
Nick Pryor, regional innovation solutions director for EMEA, who led on the development of the platform alongside global innovation group head Katie DeBord and Edward Coulson, a commercial disputes partner, told Legal IT Insider: “This service is built around the experience that our in-house forensic team has in using the platform and using predictive coding, which we’ve already had success in using.” BCLP this year won the first contested application to use predictive coding (Ringtail) as part of a substantial document review exercise, having acted in the 2016 Pyrrho case where predictive coding was approved for the first time by the English High Court.
Read more here
Obelisk launches mobile time recording app
Flexible legal resource provider Obelisk Legal Support Solutions has built and launched a cloud-based time recording app for its employees to record their time on the go. The app, which is for both iOS and Android, means that time is being recorded much quicker and provides Obelisk’s management with better visibility over how time is being spent.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Obelisk’s founder and CEO Dana Denis-Smith said: “People download the app on their mobile phone to record how much time they have worked in a week when they are working on a project. It’s much quicker and gives us much more visibility of how much time is being spent on a job.” It also enables Obelisk to help match the right talent to the right job.
Obelisk employees are required to fill in a narrative to explain how they have spent their time and while filling in time is never popular, Denis-Smith says: “Our aim to do this in the simplest way, which helps us with client conversations.”
Read more here
“A boost for AI”: Harvard Law School puts 6.5m cases online
Litigation analytics just got even more interesting in the US, after the Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School Library last week officially launched its Caselaw Access Project API, which puts the full corpus of published US case law online in order to help developers build tools to analyse the findings. Between 2013 and 2018, the Library digitised over 40 million pages of US court decisions, transforming them into a data set covering 6.5 million individual cases, going back to 1658. Crucially, these records have been made available in a machine-readable format for anyone to use for free, working in partnership with Ravel Law, which in 2017 was acquired by LexisNexis.
“Having access to a database that someone else has built and having the entirety of case law available to download for processing with your own programmes is a big change,” lecturer and senior developer on the Caselaw Access Project Jack Cushman told Legal IT Insider. “We are not creating another LexisNexis database. We are creating a data set that people can use to find new ways to explore case law.”
Read more here
Wins and Deals
CFG Law add DocsCorp email recipient tech to Microsoft Outlook for data leak prevention
DocsCorp last week announced that CFG Law, a specialist personal injury law firm based in the UK, has added cleanDocs from DocsCorp to prevent inadvertent email data leaks. Human error in handling email is the leading cause of data breaches worldwide, and increasingly firms are looking for a solution to protect staff from accidentally sending sensitive client data to the wrong person.
Steve Taylor, head of IT and business improvements at CFG Law said: “Our Lawyers are aware of the sensitive nature of the emails they send, and we wanted a way to reduce the risk of sending emails to the wrong recipient. Data protection is very important to us. We looked at an email delay solution, but we didn’t want to slow down the end-user. So, we trialled cleanDocs and found it very easy to install, configure, and use. Now, everyone at the firm cleans document metadata on send and double checks recipients so they can be confident every email ends up in the right inbox.”
Bennett Jones deploys HighQ collaboration portal
Bennett Jones LLP has launched a firm-wide, branded collaboration portal built on the HighQ platform to improve the delivery of its legal services to clients around the globe.
Bennett Jones is one of Canada’s premier business law firms and home to 400 lawyers and business advisers in Canada and internationally.
The firm will leverage HighQ’s software as a tool to empower better collaboration, project management, client experience and overall productivity.
“It is important for us to have a platform that allows us to define and design unique solutions to meet our clients’ specific needs,” said Kate R. Simpson, national director of knowledge management at Bennett Jones. “HighQ is not a one-size-fits-all technology; what we might use the platform for is limited only by our imaginations. We wanted to give our clients access to the leading technologies in the legal sphere. HighQ’s platform allows us to do just that, and in the knowledge that we have partnered with the leading provider for security, vision and legal experience.”
Bennett Jones’s deployment of HighQ’s software comes on the heels of the launch of two HighQ data centres in Canada, which provide additional infrastructure to serve as a resource to firms in Canada, as well as throughout North America.
Zylpha’s all-new Bundling System now available
Zylpha has launched an all new version of its document bundling solution. Completely re-engineered from the ground up, users are provided with a single view dashboard rather than having to take multiple steps on different screens.
Zylpha says that user experience is also much improved. Be sure to send us your feedback.
Womble Bond acquires T3 knowledge management software from Lexsoft
Womble Bond Dickinson has selected a Traceable Taxonomy Toolkit (T3) knowledge management software from Lexsoft Systems.
David Lee, IT Director at WBD, comments: “The T3 KMS will allow WBD to apply complex taxonomies to the knowledge held in our iManage Document Systems as well as design our own publication cycle – from the document proposal, to the KM professional’s curation of the document. Finally, our legal teams will be able to easily access KM documents either by using T3 Search or iManage Insight. We look forward to using the system and working with Lexsoft Systems. ”
HighQ partners with iDefendo
And there is more news from HighQ, which has entered into partnership with iDefendo, a file transfer service that targets IP intensive and creative businesses.
iDefendo creates a digital timeline of events showing when files were sent and when recipients dowloaded the file. HighQ clients can now use iDefendo to automatically log all file-related events (uploads, new versions and so on) for files and documents that are securely stored on the HighQ platform. For all logged events, iDefendo creates digital witnesses through blockchain technology. These witnesses are collated in evidence binders that can be downloaded if users need to prove anything related to the files they store in HighQ.
If a question of document ownership arises, the digital witnesses provided by iDefendo serves to validate copyright claims, stated intentions, ownership of IP and contractual agreements, saving the business legal costs.
“This partnership with iDefendo continues our efforts to offer HighQ clients easy access to top-tier solutions for every aspect of their legal work,” said Martin Rohde, HighQ’s strategic partner manager for EMEA, “iDefendo gives HighQ users an unmatched tool in the marketplace to confidently send and protect files associated with intellectual property.”
Comment
“If I brought my guys another deal right now they would probably hang me”: Consilio’s CEO talks integration and opportunity
The inside story on consolidation in the eDiscovery space from Consilio’s CEO Andy Macdonald
Ediscovery and document review giant Consilio is on its third private equity owner in a little over three years, as investors cash in on a fragmented and high-growth industry. In March 2018, Los-Angeles-based Shamrock Capital sold its stake in the business to GI Partners as part of Consilio’s take-over of rival Advanced Discovery. Just over six months on, and the acquisition spree continues. Consilio has acquired DiscoverReady in what is believed to be its largest deal yet.
“When it was announced that there was going to be a process run this summer we were caught a little off guard because it had only been a few months since we had acquired Advanced Discovery,” said Consilio’s CEO Andy Macdonald. “Under normal circumstances we would probably have taken a pass because we had so much going on. But given our high regard for the company and the executive team we felt that we had to participate.”
This wasn’t the first time Consilio had attempted to buy DiscoverReady. The relationship goes back all the way to 2014, when the business was owned by publicly-listed company Dolan Media. Dolan was experiencing liquidity issues at the time and began a process to sell DiscoverReady in order to raise capital.
Read more here
Up and running: Adidas Global Legal Solutions
One of the highlights of October was attending Eversheds Sutherland’s inhouse legal 4.0 event, where the UK top 20 firm brought together a number of senior in-house counsel to discuss their technology challenges and achievements.
Katherine Roseveare, EMEA GC of Adidas’ global legal team told a packed room about the creation of Global Legal Solutions – a three-strong team also led by Roseveare that was formed to take charge of legal technology, spend, knowledge and communication.
Within legal technology, GLS has looked at the entire contract lifecycle, which includes matter management; contract creation and automation; eSignatures; and contract management.
You can read about the global legal team’s foundation legal systems are, how they are changing, and what Roseveare would do differently had she looked at the entire portfolio from scratch in the October issue of the our free monthly Orange Rag newsletter, issue 317: https://legaltechnology.com//latest-newsletter/
Events
Document automation. Are you ready?
Thomson Reuters invites you to this exclusive webinar chaired by Legal IT Insider editor Caroline Hill
Date: Thursday, 15 November 2018: Time: 12:30 – 13:30 (GMT)
To be discussed:
– How to identify the need for automation
– The benefits of using automation technology
– How to choose the software that’s right for your business & needs
– Preparing for implementation to ensure a successful rollout
Sign up here
Association of Legal Technologists Announces ctrl ALT del 2019 Conference
The Association of Legal Technologists (ALT), a membership organization focused on advancing technology solutions to solve real-world problems in the legal community announces plans and early bird discount rate for its ctrl ALT del 2019 conference. The conference will take place February 9-12, 2019, at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. To learn more, visit https://altnets.org/