THE LEADER IN LEGAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS Issue 134 DLA sees ClientZone portal as key to vision At its annual press conference last week, the UK law firm DLA (previously Dibb Lupton Alsop) announced a 15% increase in gross fee income to £203 for the year ending 20 April 2002 and a 16% increase in profits per equity. Managing partner Nigel Knowles also outlined the firm’s ‘vision’ - or three year strategic plan - for the period 2002-to-2005 which is to make DLA “a top 5 European full service firm with a significant presence in Asia”. This theme was expanded on by DLA’s IT director Daniel Pollick. According to Pollick, along with building the framework to support closer integration between DLA and members of its D&P international association of law firms, one of his priorities was “to use the power of the internet to deliver better solutions Scottish Law Society for our clients through the integration of online with offline in web domain dispute services.” Pollick was however keen to stress this was not the usual law firm dotcom hype as he was only too well aware of The Law Society of Scotland has become what does not work on the internet, highlighting both embroiled in a dispute over its LawScot standalone online legal services and first generation virtual domain with a Scottish internet company dealrooms as non-runners. that also claims the name. DLA will instead focus its attentions on a new “relationship The row dates back to late 1999 and the building” extranet portal called ClientZone. This will provide heady days of the dotcom boom when the clients with a single, searchable point of access to live data on Scottish Law Society relaunched its web site their matters, documents and financial records, including a at the new www.lawscot.org.uk domain and, permanent repository of every document they have ever at the same time, registered LawScot as a received from DLA. trademark. By coincidence - or not, as this is ClientZone is expected to go live in late 2002 however the one of the issues in dispute - in November technology, developed inhouse and based on Borland AP Server, 1999 a company called Real McCoy JZEE protocols and Java, already provides the basis for the firm’s registered the www.lawscot.co.uk domain myDLA intranet. DLA currently spends a “seven figure sum” of name for an online directory project - called between 5-to-7% of its annual turnover on IT, including Local Websites - that it was then working on. hardware, software, services and staff resources, each year. The Law Society allege that Real McCoy’s 4 After spending time on a consultancy exercise reviewing actions constitute trademark infringement alternative practice management solutions, DLA has decided to whereas Real McCoy claim they legitimately stick with its existing Axxia Arista system for at least the next registered the co.uk domain first and that the three years. Pollick told the Insider that, at this stage in the firm’s Law Society is just being heavy handed development, project’s like ClientZone and digital dictation took because its attempts to acquire the name a far higher priority in DLA’s IT strategy. have failed. At the Law Society’s request Nominet, the main registrar for .co.uk names, has now suspended the lawscot.co.uk Clifford Chance says yes to GPMS URL and Real McCoy is seeking to have the move reversed under one of the internet Clifford Chance has finally given the green light to its Global domain name dispute arbitration schemes. Practice Management System project with IT consultancy Cap Gemini Ernst & Young selected as the prime contractor. GPMS will provide Clifford Chance with one integrated system for time The Insider web site recording, billing, accounting, financial analysis and reporting across all of its 28 offices in 19 countries. GPMS system will start For the latest news plus legal technology to go live from early 2003 and the global programme will be resources - including IT jobs, events diary, completed during 2004. GPMS is the first time a combination of industry links and extensive search facilities - the two systems - Oracle and Keystone - have been integrated to visit the award winning Insider web site. provide an end-to-end solution. Oracle supplies the database and financial software; Keystone, the law firm functionality www.legaltechnology.com including time, billing and client management applications. 29 May 2002 1 LEGAL TECHNOLOGY INSIDER www.legaltechnology.com News in brief Foot Anstey launch deal 4 CW&C DEBT SOFTWARE UPGRADE The debt recovery department at Clarke room as reality bites Willmott & Clarke has placed an order with Linetime to replace its old Debtime package West country firm Foot Anstey Sargent has become the latest with Linetime’s new Debtime SQL system. solicitors practice to develop and launch a virtual dealroom The firm has been using its original Linetime facility. Called FAStDirect, the facility is already being used by system for over 10 years but felt it needed to some of the firm’s clients as an ongoing resource as well as by upgrade to ensure it had a system that could participants in a number of complex commercial transactions. continue to support a service that satisfied The FAStDirect facility is based around an IBM electronic the increasingly complex demands of debt collaboration application called QuickPlace. This provides the recovery clients. Items on the CW&C ‘wish framework to create, with minimum delay, secure virtual list’ that were met by Debtime SQL included dealrooms for whichever clients or projects they are required. the ability to have multiple defendants on Foot Anstey Sargent therefore has the option to build (the firm’s one file and suitability for both high or low inhouse IT department configures the dealrooms) simple one-off volume/value debt recovery. dealrooms, as well as more complex ongoing multi roomed ‘suites’ that include discussion rooms, available for editing and 4 HARTNELLS USE VOIP LINK commenting on documents, and data rooms containing Camberwell Green Magistrates Court has definitive versions of documents that are locked against edit. always been one of the busiest courts in Foot Anstey are confident that FAStDirect has “tremendous south London and to cope with its growing potential” and echo the popular view that virtual dealrooms will criminal practice, local solicitors Hartnells eventually become a standard part of the package of services recently opened a new office for its criminal commercial firms offer their clients. department. To provide a link between the Foot Anstey Sargent’s decision to go with QuickPlace (a new office and its main site just under a mile number of other firms now also use this product) does however away (the space freed by the move has been also reflect a growing sense of reality among lawyers when it taken over by Hartnells’ conveyancing comes to dealrooms. By opting for a relatively low cost package department) the firm has installed a VoIP based system, the firm is not only likely to see a more immediate (voice over IP) kilostream link. return on its investment but also avoid being saddled with an The VoIP link carries both data and voice expensive white elephant. traffic however both sites are able to share a This is in contrast with those firms who reputedly spent single telephone switchboard. Professional millions - or as Clifford Chance director of knowledge & Technology UK (01634 815517), who also information Paul Greenwood gnomically commented “We have supply the firm’s accounts and case not spent £6 million but it is measured in millions” - on bespoke management software, organised the router development projects during the period 1999/2000. According to technology to connect the two sites. recent research conducted by the Legalease magazine Media & Technology Adviser, the huge sums spent on first generation 4 TEXT MESSAGE SERVER SHIPPING dealrooms provoked little enthusiasm from clients. MTA Kommunicate (01962 835004) has begun interviewed 30 investment bankers who had used dealrooms but shipping the latest version of the SMS test found only five who would use them again. The rest thought messaging system Text Messager Server 3.0. them “a waste of time” and less efficient than using email. 4 CONVEYANCING SERVICE LAUNCH Earlier this year Hill Dickinson announced Courts heading for 24/7 era ? plans for a major roll out of the Axxia case management system to 400 users across the Commenting on last week’s launch of a new report on the civil firm. One of the first departments to take courts system Modernising the Civil & Family Courts, the chief advantage of it has been the residential executive of the Court Service Ian Magee said: “These plans will conveyancing department in Chester. There, enable us to change radically the way that the courts work. This the case management software has been used programme will make full use of the opportunities that modern to provide the basis for both streamlining the IT provides, including the internet, to ensure the courts can play firm’s internal procedures - for example all their full part in joining up justice, through more effective case searches are now submitted electronically via management systems and exchange of information. We must NLIS - and providing clients with an online provide court users with better access to the courts, better progress tracking service, via the Axxia E- information and a wider choice of services, if possible available case facility. 24 hours a day.” www.courtservice.gov.uk 2 29 May 2002 LEGAL TECHNOLOGY INSIDER www.legaltechnology.com Gamesbiz takes a flutter News in brief 4 THOMPSONS CHOOSE AXXIA on GhostFill Thompsons, one of the largest trade union law specialist practices in the UK, has Osborne Clarke has supplied the GhostFill document assembly selected Axxia Systems to supply an 80 user system with its first major win in the UK.