Here are the UK and North America wins, deals and legal IT news you need to know about from the past few days. If it’s not here, check elsewhere on legaltechnology.com
UK
Ellisons Solicitors selects NetDocuments for cloud-based document management
UK top 200 law firm Ellisons Solicitors has selected NetDocuments as its new document management system. The implementation partner is Tikit.
Ellisons offers a wide range of services to businesses aided by its membership of the Alliott Global Alliance. The firm has a team of almost 250 staff, including 29 partners, located in Colchester, Chelmsford, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Tendring (Clacton-on-Sea and Frinton-on-Sea) and London.
As an existing Tikit P4W practice and case management customer, Ellisons selected NetDocuments due to its need to facilitate long-term hybrid remote working and its ability to easily integrate with existing systems. Tikit, a NetDocuments Global Platinum Partner, will be leading the implementation and deployment project.
“Choosing a document management system was the last piece of our digital transformation jigsaw,” said John Turner, chief information officer at Ellisons. “We chose NetDocuments as it is truly built on the cloud, unlike other DMS platforms. We were also impressed by NetDocuments’ ability to integrate with our existing practice management platform, email and newer messaging platforms such as Microsoft Teams to provide a seamless user experience. NetDocuments’ security model is also second to none. The combination of the platform’s ease of use and high levels of security will give us peace of mind knowing our employees will be able to work securely, flexibly and productively, irrespective of their location.”
Guy Phillips, vice president of international business at NetDocuments added: “As the world transitions to a new working model, it’s never been a better time to accelerate digital transformation projects to minimise disruption and get ahead of the competition. We’re pleased to be working with Ellisons Solicitors as it moves towards creating a seamless and future-proof hybrid working environment for its staff.”
BDO renews 3-year license agreement with ayfie
Auditing and advisory company BDO will continue its collaboration and extend their license agreement with search and text analytics provider ayfie for three more years.
Ayfie’s linguistic-based framework analyzes words and phrases based on their context. Its knowledge discovery solution for BDO combines artificial intelligence frameworks with natural language processing. It provides an efficient toolset to access and assess internal information faster – even if it is split across multiple data silos.
“We have had a very good collaboration with ayfie, which has helped us make data available for, among other things, postings and reuse. Together we are working to find new areas to utilize the technology in BDO. We look forward to continuing to work with ayfie to meet the demands and needs of the future”, says Jørgen Brodtkorb, IT Director at BDO.
“Leveraging our enhanced linguistic framework on BDO’s distributed knowledge base shows the full potential of our platform when it comes to discovering insights within huge amounts of unstructured data, said Johannes Stiehler, CEO, ayfie Group AS.
The agreement between ayfie and BDO entails an extension of three years for 1,600 users.
UK firm Memery Crystal selects BigHand’s PitchPoint
UK top 200 law firm Memery Crystal is set to deploy legal pitching and proposal solution BigHand PitchPoint to streamline internal processes and remote working.
Regularly cited in Chambers UK and The Legal 500, Memery Crystal is a leading international law firm based in London.
Kate Ewings, head of business development and marketing at Memery Crystal said: “We have a small, highly-skilled and agile Marketing and BD team at Memery Crystal. We look after the full marketing mix including the preparation of legal tenders or bids. Without any legal proposal software in place, we often have to recreate the documents from scratch, which is time consuming and sometimes leads to branding inconsistencies. We needed a way to save ourselves time while making the process more efficient and consistent.”
BigHand PitchPoint acts as a central repository of organised information on a law firm’s varied experience that can be searched by users and accessed by third-party systems. This information can then be turned into professional, consistently branded legal pitch documents and presentations for a more efficient, streamlined pitching process, as well as facilitating a firm’s directory submission process.
Ewings added: “I could see in the product demo that BigHand PitchPoint could help the marketing team to work smarter, not harder. By providing us with seamless access to all the information we need, from matter information, to business accolades or lawyer experience, we’ll be able quickly and easily create tailored proposals for our clients that really address their objectives and demonstrate our value.”
The legal pitching solution works effectively from any location, something that is imperative at this time with remote working set to stay and legal work inevitably becoming more competitive.
North America
Epiq acquires Hyperion
Epiq has acquired Hyperion Global Partners (Hyperion), a leading global business and technology advisory practice for legal operations and transformation.
The acquisition expands Epiq’s strategy to deliver a suite of legal business management services and solutions to corporate in-house law departments, law firms and other clients. Hyperion’s founder and CEO, Eyal Iffergan, will join Epiq as managing director of its new legal operations advisory business.
The Hyperion acquisition includes its legal operations advisory practice as well as Hyperion Research, the analyst-driven unit of Hyperion Global Partners focused on legal solutions market intelligence.
“The recent pace of legal industry change has acutely accelerated the need for law departments and firms to be run like a business, including the need to embrace digital transformation,” said Ziad Mantoura, SVP and general manager for Epiq’s legal transformation services business. “Hyperion has a team of expert consultants and a heritage of guiding clients to make intelligent, fact-based decisions to transform their businesses. Joining forces with this team and its impressive market intelligence capabilities adds considerable depth to the solutions we offer our clients as we help guide their digital transformation.”
The legal transformation services group at Epiq was launched earlier this year and is part of its Legal Solutions business, led by Roger Pilc, President and General Manager. Hyperion’s capabilities complement Epiq’s services, which in addition to law department and law firm consulting, includes eDiscovery, legal spend analysis, flexible legal talent, and information governance.
Relativity joins Microsoft Intelligent Security Assocation
Relativity has joined the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), a coalition of independent software vendors that have integrated their solutions into Microsoft’s security product ecosystem to help joint customers better defend themselves against a world of increasing cyber threats. To be considered for MISA, organizations must be nominated by Microsoft and demonstrate integrations that support the goal of improving enterprise security.
Relativity’s application for proactive compliance and surveillance, Relativity Trace, integrates with Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) to ensure compliance teams can monitor internal communications for misconduct (insider trading, collusion and other non-compliant behavior) without reducing an organizations security posture. This allows compliance teams to monitor electronic communications–including email, chat, and audio–in near real-time, immediately alerting on the highest-risk content for compliance officers to review.
“We are honored to be included in this coalition focused on best-in-class security for our customers,” said Jordan Domash, General Manager of Relativity Trace. “Together we can harness the power of the cloud to help companies effectively detect and take action on non-compliant behavior within a secure platform.”
Relativity Trace’s integration with MIP has an added security encryption layer that provides users additional controls for sensitive data. MIP also allows users to set up rules around what data is protected and which customer-controlled keys encrypt that data. Relativity Trace integrates with MIP to support review of protected data for risky behavior within a secure platform. Relativity Trace is available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
“The Microsoft Intelligent Security Association has grown into a vibrant ecosystem comprised of the most reliable and trusted security software vendors across the globe,” said Rani Lofstrom, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft Security. “Our members, like Relativity, share Microsoft’s commitment to collaboration within the cybersecurity community to improve our customers’ ability to predict, detect, and respond to security threats faster.”
OpenText brings digital investigation to the cloud with Microsoft Azure
OpenText EnCase Forensic and OpenText EnCase Endpoint Investigator are now certified on Microsoft Azure. With OpenText Encase solutions in the cloud, law enforcement and corporate investigators can more easily collaborate, enhance evidence processing, investigate in cloud environments, and adjust more quickly to the needs of a remote workforce.
“Industries, employees, and even criminals across the world are embracing new ways to work,” said OpenText Chief Product Officer Muhi Majzoub. “Digital forensic investigators need to be just as agile. OpenText supports the investigators at the frontlines, finding the digital evidence needed to seek justice or respond to a cyberattack. Embracing the power, scale, and efficiency of the cloud will help digital investigators be more effective.”
OpenText worked to support Microsoft’s focus on public safety and justice to bring the benefits of Microsoft Azure – efficiency, power, and scalability – to OpenText EnCase solutions for digital investigations. Additional EnCase security solutions will be available on Azure.
“Microsoft is dedicated to delivering solutions to help public safety and justice organisations increase the safety of people and the security of the communities they serve,” said Kirk Arthur, Senior Director of Worldwide Government Industry, Microsoft. “Public sector, enterprise, and law enforcement organisations are beginning to take advantage of the scale, enterprise-grade security, and high availability of Microsoft Azure. We are pleased to see OpenText bringing the advantages of Azure to digital investigators all around the world.”
Relativity Achieves FedRAMP Authorization for RelativityOne Government
And in more Relativity news, the eDiscovery leader has achieved Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authority to Operate (ATO) at the Moderate security impact level for its RelativityOne Government service offering. Relativity achieved this authorization in partnership with its sponsoring agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), accomplishing ATO for EPA’s dedicated environment as projected on Sept. 14.
FedRAMP is one of the most extensive security authorizations SaaS companies can achieve. It provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services to ensure all federal data is secure in cloud environments. Relativity received FedRAMP ATO after an extensive review process that involved an intensive assessment designed to seek out security weaknesses. With this designation, RelativityOne Government is now a fully compliant platform approved for use by federal government agencies.
“Federal government agencies and organizations in highly regulated industries are under immense pressure to pivot efficiently and safely to the cloud, which requires a security protocol that leaves no room for doubt,” said Amanda Fennell, Chief Security Officer at Relativity. “Achieving FedRAMP ATO is a true testament to Relativity’s commitment to meet these rapidly evolving and rigorous demands placed on federal agencies. FedRAMP authorization is another validation point for the robust security posture that protects all of our customers, and the improvements made to get here will benefit every team entrusting their data to RelativityOne.”