Leading UK media, technology and IP firm Wiggin has today (13 November) signed on the dotted line with Aderant Handshake’s knowledge management solution, we can reveal, joining seven other new law firms wins including Sackers and DMH Stallard in the UK, and US top 100 firm Blank Rome.
The other new firms to sign up in the past couple of months are Williams Kastner; Gray Reed & McCraw; Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers; and Goldberg Segalla as Handshake, which was acquired by Aderant in August 2017, feels the benefit of the weight of a larger organisation.
Handshake helps firms to centralise their knowledge and make it accessible through intranets, extranets, search applications and mobility solutions. Despite its acquisition by practice management vendor Aderant, the KM provider has remained agnostic and Blank Rome and Sackers, for example, are Elite customers.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider about the recent spike in new wins, vice president of knowledge management Glenn La Force said: “It’s been a little more than a year since the acquisition and the initial concern among customers was that we were not going to be agnostic. Over the course of time we’ve seen that Aderant has done a good job of investing and allowing the product to be agnostic.
“There are two different reasons why we’re continuing to grow at a fast pace. One, we released in June Handkshake Connect, which is our out of the box version of the portal and enables firm to get up and running in three weeks: that’s a very big game changer. It has a polished user interface and can be deployed in a short amount of time.
“Two, being part of Aderant and having global support has given people more comfort in purchasing the software, rather buying from a small software house in Atlanta. It gives people the comfort level they need, especially in the UK, where people like to have a large organisation behind it.”
At Wiggin, the purchase has been led by finance head Sarah Mitten, although in the UK, the acquisition of Handshake’s software is typically led by IT followed by KM and then the finance team. In the US, it is KM followed by IT.
In a release out later today, Danny O’Connor, head of IT at Sackers, says: “Sackers is developing a state-of-the-art, lawyer-centric intranet and saw Aderant Handshake as the key partner to join all of our data sources. By giving the lawyers a view of all their firm data in once place we will enable greater efficiency and transparency.”
