Issue 110 £6.00 CHARLES CHRISTIAN’s LEGAL TECHNOLOGY iNSIDER THE SOURCE FOR INDEPENDENT LEGAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS, COMMENT AND ANALYSIS MARTIN KAYE TAKE ASP HOBSON AUDLEY IN OUTSOURCING DEAL ROUTE WITH AXXIA City of London law firm Hobson Audley In what is believed to be the first deal of its kind in the UK has outsourced its IT facilities to the legal market, Axxia Systems is delivering its back office and technology services supplier Tikit as part fee earner tools to Telford solicitors Martin Kaye via an of a deal that is expected to see the firm application service provider. Axxia has teamed up with spending in excess of £500,000 with Tikit Martin Kaye’s preferred comms partner Hub to ASP its over the next three years. Artiion accounts, case management and fee earner desktop Despite the fact outsourcing and systems to the 54-strong practice. facilities management (FM) have proved a Martin Kaye systems partner Chris Cann said the firm success in other markets, Hobson Audley went the ASP route because “We were facing the classic is only the second UK law firm to have expansion conundrum. We’d won a substantial tranche of adopted this approach on a practice wide new business, had plans to double the staff over the next scale - the first was Clarke Willmott & year but knew our technical infrastructure would require a Clarke in the west country. massive upgrade. I drew up plans on the current client Cynics might say this is because server model but there were two immediate stumbling inhouse IT departments have a vested blocks - the huge cost and the on-going resources needed interest in rubbishing the benefits of FM. to manage such a sprawling network. While you cannot expect turkeys to vote “One of the reasons why a conventional upgrade would for Christmas, 2001 could be the year have been so costly was we were running a hotchpotch of lawyers finally wake up to the PC specifications, most necessitating either major advantages of FM. Insider sources modernisation or replacement. Add to that the desire to indicate between ten and 15 law firms, double the size of the practice - with a PC per person - and as well as a set of barristers’ chambers, it seemed there was an awful lot of investment required, in are currently considering outsourcing. effect, just to stand still. Also, we had yet to factor in total 4 Tikit has just reported a 38 percent cost of ownership, which is very substantial in a desktop increase in revenues for the first half of computing environment.” this year, suggesting it is escaping the Cann describes Hub’s ASP server-based solution as “in recession hitting other legal IT vendors. essence a miracle cure” as it removes all the technical, financial, upgrade and support issues associated with running a conventional inhouse IT facility. Although lack of bandwidth is frequently cited as a LEGAL reason why pure internet based ASP might be slow to take TECHNOLOGY iNSIDER off in the UK, Cann reckons Hub’s 512k leased line www.legaltechnology.org connection to Martin Kaye means users are able to work with Axxia applications at speeds equivalent to those of a To keep up with the latest developments Pentium III PC. in legal technology and new media law 4 This form of ASP turns conventional PCs into thin between issues of this newsletter visit client/dumb terminals. Other legal vendors have told the the Legal Technology Insider web site. Insider they see the new Windows 2000 Server system, Along with regularly updated news, which replaces Microsoft’s older Terminal Server product, including daily reports from Masons’ as an alternative inhouse approach for firms needing to OUT-LAW.COM service, there are web upgrade their software applications, such as moving to bookmarks, a diary of legal IT events, the Word from WordPerfect, without also having to replace all latest hoax and virus reports, an archive their PC hardware. Changes in Microsoft’s pricing structure of back issues of the Insider, extensive also mean that for single location implementations 2000 search facilities plus portal links to the Server is cheaper than the rival Citrix Winframe system. LSSA Solution Finder, UKLIT and ILCA US legal ASP service fails, see page 3 web sites. 22 November 2000 1 Legal Technology Insider www.legaltechnology.org UK IT INDUSTRY GETS NEWS IN BRIEF 4 TRIAY AND TRIAY AGAIN THE THUMBS DOWN Elite Information Systems continues to At a recent Berwin Leighton seminar computer industry go from strength to strength in the analyst Richard Holway warned that the UK’s IT sector European legal market, its latest win could expect another two years of weak growth and falling being at Triay & Triay, one of the largest profits, with many suppliers suffering losses not seen since law firms in Europe. Elite’s European the early 1990s. Holway says most companies will be lucky general manager David Thorpe says the if they enjoy growth rates of 10 percent and suggests it will company is currently devoting a lot of be the year 2002 before the market starts to recover. He resources to developing European-specific blames the recession on the “Y2K micro climate” which functionality, including the recently saw customers bring forward IT investment plans to tackle released French language version of the the millennium bug but then freeze all new expenditure. accounts system and a new EGR Holway’s analysis confirms earlier predictions by the globalisation release that is due to be Insider that the legal IT industry is heading for a recession. launched in a couple of months. Along with a number of vendors in the dead pool, who we suspect will not survive until the end of next year in their 4 NEW FROM COPITRAK present form, the combination of slump and the new IR35 Keeping with the European theme, tax scheme is taking its toll on independent consultants, Copitrak Systems, which has offices in with several recently throwing in the towel and opting to the UK, France, Belgium and Germany, work inhouse for either law firms or other suppliers. has announced two new modules for its cost recovery product range. These are: ServiceTRAK Plus, which provides L&H ON CRITICAL LIST ? additional systems administration The recent saga of the speech recognition group Lernout & functionality, and WEB Edit, a browser Hauspie, the parent of Dragon Dictate and Dictaphone, based application for editing expenses has taken a turn for the worst with directors admitting to relating to telephone calls. accounting “errors and irregularities” in the financial www.copitrak-europe.com statements for 1998, 1999 and the first half of 2000. Third quarter revenues for this year are now expected to be at 4 SAVING THE TREES least $40 million lower than previous predictions. The Glasgow solicitors Golds are using a new company’s stock has been suspended on both NASDAQ printer utility called FinePrint to manage and EASDAQ - not that this matters as its shares have their print activities, which reduces both now fallen by about 95 percent of their value from their paper and toner consumption. The record high in March this year. Co-founders Jo Lernout application gives users greater control and Pol Hauspie have stepped down as co-chairman and over layout, such as producing some managing director, although they retain their seats on the documents as an A5 booklet rather than board. And the company is facing a growing number of a series of A4 pages. Some users in the shareholder class actions in the United States, as well as United States report that the software having to repay $200 million in short term debt by March. has reduced paper consumption by over 30 percent. The full version of FinePrint costs £28 (inc VAT) and is available from Software Partners (01926 842998). There YOU CAN ALWAYS BE CERTAIN is also a limited shareware version of the OF DEATH AND TAXES product that can be downloaded free of Excelsior LawDesk (01273 494978) launched its FormDesk charge from the web. IHT 2000 system at the recent STEP Scotland annual www.software-partners.co.uk/printing conference. The new system, which runs in conjunction with Microsoft Excel, costs from £550 (+ VAT) and is 4 LEGAL TECH GOES EAST designed to handle the changes to the inheritance tax Legal IT staff agency LegalTech regime introduced in Scotland in late September. The Recruitment has moved from its offices in product includes the new C1 and C2 forms which become the City of London to new premises in mandatory from the beginning of December. Excelsior’s the Docklands area. The new address is ExecutryDesk estate accounts system, originally developed 46 Skylines, Limeharbour, London in conjunction with Murray Beith Murray, has also been E4 9TS. The new phone number is 020 updated to encompass the new forms. 7510 8400. 2 22 November 2000 Legal Technology Insider www.legaltechnology.org RESSOFT HAS BIG IDEA NEWS IN BRIEF Legal systems supplier ResSoft has long been an advocate 4 LAW SOCIETY GUIDE OUT NOW of “best of breed” but now the company, which in recent The English Law Society last week months has been assembling alliances with third-party published the latest edition of its integration partners including iManage, Metastorm e-work Software Solutions Guide for smaller law and Eureka IQ, believes it is in a position to offer law firms firms. Thanks to sponsorship by Canon the next generation in practice management systems. UK it is being mailed to all firms with 10 Provisionally called Total Practice Management, this is a partners or less. The 2001 guide contains super-PMS concept employing an onion-like architecture details of nine suppliers of practice of overlapping layers that can offer a law firm everything management systems.