Here are the latest legal tech wins, deals and people moves from across the UK, EMEA and North America. In the UK, Magic circle firm Linklaters has worked with Opus 2 to tailor and rollout Opus 2 Investigations across its global network. Woodfines has selected BigHand’s full workflow management solution, while Bristows has selected and deployed iTrain Legal’s training chatbot iTrain Ali, from Nikec Solutions. iManage, meanwhile, has entered into a formal partnership with Sandline Global to extend its reach in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France.
In North America, The Noble Law, a women-owned plaintiffs’ employment law firm has signed up with Litify, and Intapp has entered a strategic alliance with KPMG. QuisLex, a leading ALSP, has announced that prominent Boston eDiscovery services provider Datamine Discovery is its newest channel partner, and Control Risks, the specialist risk consultancy, is expanding its technology offering with Reveal.
In terms of our latest movers and shakers, in the UK and EMEA, global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has appointed Alex Fortescue-Webb and Daniel Marks to co-lead the firm’s legal managed services offering. They join from EY. FTI Consulting has appointed Stuart Craft as a managing director in its E-Discovery Consulting & Services practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”). In North America, Baretz+Brunelle has added a new chief digital officer, Josh Anisfeld, to lead its growing digital team. Anisfeld joins Baretz+Brunelle from Heidrick & Struggles.
You can read about all of those in more detail below.
Wins and deals
UK and EMEA
Magic circle firm Linklaters has worked with Opus 2 to tailor and rollout Opus 2 Investigations across its global network.
Opus 2 Investigations is a secure cloud-based solution that brings together the key evidence in an investigation in a single connected space and enables both lawyers and their clients to collaborate better and carry out the investigation process with greater efficiency.
Linklaters’ lawyers have worked closely with Opus 2 to configure and tailor the solution to ensure that it meets the needs of their lawyers working on investigations on a daily basis. In late 2021, Opus 2 Investigations was successfully piloted across Linklaters’ dispute resolution and financial regulation practices, receiving excellent feedback. The firm has now rolled out the technology to offices across its global network for use across a range of investigatory work with clients.
Ben Packer, dispute resolution partner and member of the firm’s Innovation Steering Group said: “This innovative technology is a game-changer for investigations work, revolutionising traditional legal processes towards a far more seamless way of working.
“After helping to shape and now roll out our tailored implementation of Opus 2 Investigations, we’re looking forward to maximising its potential and the benefits it offers for our clients – from considerable time-savings to closer collaboration at every step during an investigation.”
UK regional firm Woodfines has upgraded its BigHand licences to the full workflow management solution.
Maggie Shen, operations manager at Woodfines said: “As we move towards a centralised support staff function, we knew we needed better visibility of which tasks the lawyers were delegating to different support resources. We were impressed with the transparency BigHand Workflow Management could eventually offer us, and how it is built for law firms.”
BigHand Workflow Management is a task delegation solution that allows work to be automatically routed to the best-suited support staff and monitored throughout the process. Output reports can be used by management for visibility of key metrics like work type, volume, capacity and utilisation to allow firms to make data-driven decisions around staffing, training and performance.
Shen added: “We want to encourage hybrid working for our staff and with the workflow technology in place, we will be able to ensure that physical work is sent to those in the office, and other tasks to those at home. Any billable work completed by support staff that might currently be missed can also be picked up on and billed to the client appropriately.
“The data provided will be really valuable to management who can make informed decisions around recruitment and training, rather than anecdotal information that can be hard to quantify.”
London headquartered law firm, Bristows LLP, has selected and deployed iTrain Legal’s training chatbot iTrain Ali, from Nikec Solutions, to assist its workforce in using legal software applications.
Having started with iManage Work10, Bristows will also be deploying chatbots to help users answer their ‘How to…’ questions for MS Teams, MS Office and pdfDocs.
iTrain Ali is an MS Teams or browser-based chatbot that provides tips and pointers to “How Do I…?” enquiries about legal applications. Supported by user guides and videos, iTrain Ali gives users real time answers 24/7.
Phil Wood, IT Director at Bristows, said “We deployed the new iManage Work10 solution during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we had to deliver our training in a very unusual way.
“We work flexibly now: colleagues are not necessarily working in the same office or at the same time. Fee earners may not always have quick, in-person, access to those who can explain how to use our software applications in the same way as before. iTrain Ali is a great way to bridge that gap.”
Sandline Global — a global consultant for document and email management solutions with primary offices in Frankfurt, Germany — has become part of the iManage partner network.
The new partnership extends iManage’s reach in the DACH region, providing law firms of all sizes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France with a new resource for making the move to the iManage platform.
“Becoming an iManage certified partner was the logical choice for us as a business,” said Ralf Kaiser, managing director of Sandline Germany GmbH. “iManage is the leading platform for knowledge work, and there is growing interest and demand among customers for iManage products. It just made sense for us to focus on what the market is asking for.”
Sandline has already delivered strong results in its new role as an iManage partner, successfully migrating German law firm Sparwasser & Schmidt in Freiburg to iManage Cloud in just 45 days including data migration.
North America
The Noble Law – a women-owned plaintiffs’ employment law firm – has selected Litify, the end-to-end legal operations platform for law firms and legal departments.
Litify will provide The Noble Law with a complete and transparent view of their customers, cases, and staff across every touchpoint.
“Working with multiple providers and products proved difficult when measuring workflow efficiency and internal productivity. Clients who reach out to us are often calling during one of the worst crises of their lives. Having data at our fingertips allows us to move quickly and thoroughly respond to our client’s needs and help them navigate what is typically a very stressful process,” said Laura Noble, founder and managing partner of The Noble Law. “Litify’s cloud-based technology will empower our staff to collaborate with clients more efficiently while enabling data-driven decisions to support successful outcomes.”
The Noble Law also chose Litify for its matter management features, which include automation and practice-specific task management and document creation capabilities.
Intapp has entered a strategic alliance with KPMG AG to help legal organisations in their transformation journeys. This collaboration builds on KPMG’s global alliance with Microsoft and furthers Intapp’s global strategic partnership with Microsoft as well.
KPMG helps to navigate the complexity of transformation by assessing business drivers, developing a cloud strategy using interoperable technology, and implementing sustainable enterprise-level transformation including change management and communication. Intapp, meanwhile, enables the enterprise-level transformation of legal organisations’ most critical business operations.
QuisLex has announced that Boston eDiscovery services provider Datamine Discovery is its newest channel partner. The addition of a comprehensive discovery services provider like Datamine to its partner program enables QuisLex to deliver streamlined services to its clients as part of its managed document review and other litigation services.
Datamine Discovery provides a full spectrum of services for every stage of the discovery life cycle, from legal holds and forensic data collection to data processing and early case assessment and on to hosted data review and production through Reveal. Datamine also provides expert project management, focusing on the data with responsive consultation and the latest technology, allowing legal teams to focus on case strategy.
“A meaningful partner program requires more than simply establishing partners in name only,” says QuisLex director of sales operations and partnerships David Cochran. “QuisLex dedicates time and resources to ensure successful partnerships, starting with thorough due diligence prior to onboarding any new partners. Datamine Discovery exceeded all our criteria for new partners, and we are confident our clients will benefit from working with them.”
And Control Risks, the specialist risk consultancy, is expanding its technology offering with eDiscovery and investigations provider Reveal.
“Corporate legal and compliance teams, and their outside counsel, are looking to technology to better understand data, reduce risks and costs, and extract key insights faster across an ever-increasing volume and variety of data. We look forward to leveraging Reveal’s data visualization, AI and machine learning functionality to drive innovation with our clients,” said Brad Kolacinski, a partner in Control Risks.
Control Risks will leverage the platform globally to unlock intelligence that will help clients mitigate risks across a range of areas including litigation, investigations, compliance, ethics, fraud, human resources, privacy and security.
Moves
UK and EMEA
Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has appointed Alex Fortescue-Webb and Daniel Marks to co-lead and enhance the firm’s legal managed services offering.
Fortescue-Webb and Marks have joined the firm from EY, where they were partners, and will focus on building tech enabled managed services solutions to help in-house legal departments deliver both ongoing work and strategic projects more effectively. They will lead the team in Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA).
The legal managed services team is part of NRF Transform, the firm’s global innovation and service delivery programme.
At EY, Fortescue-Webb co-led contract lifecycle management services globally and cross-sector, with an emphasis on the Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) market. Marks played a leading role in EY’s legal managed services team in EMEIA for financial services and has worked closely with numerous technology partners in delivering solutions to clients, including the firm’s IBOR proposition.
Peter Scott, managing partner for Norton Rose Fulbright, Europe, Middle East and Asia, commented: “It’s great to welcome Alex and Daniel as we continue to make strategic investments in new capabilities to meet our clients’ evolving needs through NRF Transform. Alex and Daniel have outstanding experience and they will enable us to extend the breadth of our offering to our clients through combined advisory, legal and managed services capabilities.”
FTI Consulting’s Technology segment has appointed Stuart Craft as a managing director in its E-Discovery Consulting & Services practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”).
Craft, who is based in London, was previously technical director at Anexsys, a U.K.-based litigation support firm. He specialises in handling a wide range of data types and ensuring they are collected, processed, reviewed and produced in an accurate, clear and defensible manner.
“We’ve seen unprecedented growth in demand for our e-discovery practice over the last year, as organisations grapple with a steady uptick in the frequency and scope of disputes and investigations, alongside new challenges relating to emerging data sources,” said Jon Chan, a senior managing director within FTI Technology’s E-Discovery Consulting & Services practice in EMEA. “Our team of e-discovery, emerging data and analytics experts are at the forefront of developing solutions that provide clients with rapid insight into their data and the most efficient resolution possible for their matters. Stuart brings exceptional software development and e-discovery experience to our team and we welcome his innovation and expertise as our practice continues to expand.”
North America
Baretz+Brunelle has added a new chief digital officer, Josh Anisfeld, to lead its growing digital team. Anisfeld joins Baretz+Brunelle from Heidrick & Struggles, the international executive search firm, where he was the head of digital marketing and the originator of its digital marketing function.
“Baretz+Brunelle was early to recognize the importance of digital marketing to legal service providers, and we are continuing to invest in our leadership position with Josh, who brings more than 15 years of experience in digital communications,” said Spencer Baretz, co-founder of Baretz+Brunelle. “Josh understands not only how to introduce professional services firms to the power of digital marketing, but also how to take forward-thinking clients with active digital marketing efforts to another level.”
As chief digital officer at Baretz+Brunelle, Anisfeld will oversee its digital marketing services, working with law firms and other clients to develop digital marketing campaigns that directly support their business goals.
caroline@legaltechnology.com