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Legal Technology News Breaking news from the publishers of Legal Technology Insider. Issue.103 - 20.02.2002
IN THIS ISSUE
CONFUSION SURROUNDS FATE OF EX COREL CHIEF
However two days later the Ontario Securities Commission said it had decided to reject the proposed because it did not "send out a strong enough message". OSC vice chairman Paul Moore was quoted in the Canadian press saying there must be "real consequences" to illegal actions, and that the financial settlement should reflect the financial circumstances of the accused.
EPOCH ENJOYING SUCCESS IN US
The first project to be completed was for the American Association of Retired Persons which has over 11 million members and runs a series of walk-in legal clinics in the US. The Epoch project was to provide the clinics in the Washington DC area with an online legal service accessible by both advisers and clients. The AARP Project web site is supported by a Federal grant. Paralegals provide assistance to walk-ins to help them complete legal documents and forms. Similarly there is also a comprehensive law guide to assist the client or advice worker through the process. The site is at www.elderlawdc.com/
The second project was for The Maryland Legal Aid Network which is supported by the Soros Foundation and the Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts. The project was to create a document portal - containing "intelligent" self-help legal forms relating to family law matters - which can be accessed over the internet at www.mdjustice.net
The third project was for Profin, a specialist professional indemnity insurer who cover doctors, dentists, lawyers and accountants. Profin is now using Epoch's Rapidocs document assembly software to create automated intelligent proposal forms, which are accessible from a secure web site by its 4000 brokers. Along with the convenience factor of being able to access the forms online, the software is designed to help brokers complete the forms accurately - a big issue in the financial services market where approximately 70 percent of all proposal forms have to be rejected because they contain inaccuracies.
Profin is also using Rapidocs to support a specialist HR legal services web site providing a range of free HR services to their policyholders. The services offered include employee policy documents, handbooks and employment agreements - the objective being to minimise the risk of employee claims by ensuring policyholders use the same standard and legally sound documentation.
PATENTLY FRAUDULENT
The invoices are issued by the Central Data Register European Patent Bulletin (or ZDR-DatenRegister) in Frankfurt-am-Main and carry the blue EU flag, thus giving the impression that they are from the European Patent Office. They are not - in fact the European Patent Office does not have an office in Frankfurt and the German Patent Office has now filed criminal charges for fraud against ZDR.
Still on the subject of patents, the UK Patent Office has published a consultation paper seeking views on whether patent laws should be changed to make it easier to file patent applications. The consultation period lasts until 30 April and the paper can be found at www.patent.gov.uk/about/consultations/live.htm
ELITE ENCOMPASS GETS THUMBS UP
The report concludes that "the end result is that Encompass is easier for users to learn, easier for IT groups to manage, and offers overall lower total cost of ownership and risk than typical multi-vendor (ie best of breed) integrated solutions. Copies of the Doculabs Elite Encompass research report can be found at www.eliteis.com/newsevents/whitepapers.asp
TEXT MESSAGING SERVICES AIMS TO CUT COURT WAITING TIMES
The system is called EXHIBIT (Exchanging Hearing Information by the use of Internet Technology) and is being piloted at Chelmsford over the next six months and will be extended to Basildon and Southend during March. It involves each court clerk recording the progress of a case, such as "jury is sworn-in" or "prosecution has started", directly onto a computer in the courtroom as it happens. This information can then be automatically notified to the criminal justice organisations and lawyers involved in the case in a manner of their choosing, including email and text messaging to a mobile phone, fax or pager. Court staff can also use the same technology to communicate other hearing information, for example, proposing a change to court schedules if there is an unexpected guilty plea and a gap in the schedule appears.
The Crown Prosecution Office in the Court building also has a screen displaying updates about the progress of cases and allows them to inform witnesses via mobile phone or pager when they will be required in court to give evidence. The status of the case can also be viewed on public information screens in the court precincts and is available on the Court Service web site - www.courtservice.gov.uk and follow the link for Daily Court Status - for victims and witnesses and others interested in a case. LEGAL TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY & VENDOR NEWS
CUTTING THE RISK OF DIRTY MONEY - Lawyers have always been (well at least ought to be) aware of the risk of rogue clients trying to launder money through their offices, typically through conveyancing transactions, however since September 11 there has been a growing awareness that all businesses may inadvertently find themselves handling dirty money from terrorist front organisations. One company seeking to address this problem is UK-based Risk Values, which has just launched its first application RV1, which the company's founder Nigel Morris-Cotterill describes as "an alternative to or a supplement for transaction monitoring software in relation to financial crime."
RV1 uses a simple questionnaire that financial services businesses incorporate into their application forms and/or CRM surveys. The replies to the questions are then processed by RV1 which contains an algorithm that compares the data obtained to existing known data. Cotterill says RV1 uses established principles of personality and behavioural analysis which have been used for market research for over many years "but then applies them in a new way to an old problem." www.riskvalues.com
JONES DAY MAKES iMANAGE'S DAY - Jones Day Reavis & Pogue, one of the world's largest law firms on the planet - rated number 3 in the AmLaw top 100 - has become iManage's 1000th customer. The firm has chosen iManage WorkSite as its core collaborative content and document management system.
LATEST DRAGON NOW SHIPPING IN UK - ScanSoft Inc - the new owners of the Lernhout & Hauspie speech recognition business - are now shipping Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 6 in the UK. ScanSoft say the latest version of Dragon can handle dictation at a rate of up to 160 words per minute with even greater levels of accuracy thanks to the Nothing But Speech feature which filters out inadvertent utterances such as "uhms" and "ahs."
FINDLAW IN YELLOW PAGES DEAL - In the US, FindLaw and YellowPages.Com have announced a joint venture under which FindLaw (the key component of directory listing at FindLaw is the West Legal Directory) will become the exclusive provider of lawyer and law firm directory listings to YellowPages.Com.
NEW ENTERPRISE LITIGATION SUITE - North Carolina-based Technology Concepts & Design Inc (TCDI) is bringing all of its enterprise litigation management products and services together as a suite under one name: ClarVergence. The company's systems are already being used by the US Departments of Commerce, Energy and State, as well as in the specialist field of tobacco litigation. For example TCDI technology has been used to provide a search engine to cope with the 6 million pages of information contained on a public web site R J Reynolds is required to operate as part of the settlement of a number of tobacco lawsuits. www.tcdi.com INTERNET & ONLINE LEGAL SERVICE NEWS
NEWSLETTER FOR ASIS-PACIFIC LAW LIBRARIANS - Sean Hocking of Excata has launched a new email newsletter (ezine) for law librarians operating the Australia and Asia-Pacific region. It is called the Law Librarians Newsletter and for subscription details email hocking1@ozemail.com.au
IRELAND LIFE - The Irish legal internet services provider Legal-Island is holding a seminar "Law Firms - Getting the Most from the Internet" at The Stormont Hotel in Belfast on 11 April. The seminar is now in its fourth year and this time around will feature a programme dealing with a wide range of topics likely to be of interest to the legal profession in Northern Ireland. There will be a full screen demonstration for two plenary sessions followed by breakaway workshops. The event programme can be found at www.legal-island.com/lawfirms.htm
AWARD FOR LEGAL TECHNOLOGY WEB SITE - The Legal Technology Insider web site (from the publishers of this ezine)has been rated Site of the Month by the US portal Internet Tools for Lawyers. www.netlawtools.com
AI TO POWER LAW FIRM WEB SEARCHES - Transversal, a UK web services company has announced that Leicestershire law firm Lawson-West Solicitors is to use its technology to manage and answer the large amount of legal queries it receives by email via its web site. Transversal has developed a product called Metafaq, which utilises artificial intelligence enabling any organisation to answer questions posed to their web sites automatically. This vastly reduces incoming emails and improves speed of response. It can also be used on an intranet.
When a web site visitor asks a question, Metafaq's Memory Engine finds appropriate responses from a knowledge base of frequently asked questions (FAQs). Only questions that cannot be answered automatically are forwarded to an authorised person and their response is emailed back and added to the knowledge base to be used to answer future enquiries. The more questions that are asked and answered, the better the system becomes at handling enquiries. The system ensures a dynamic and up-to-date knowledge base of FAQs and this becomes an organisation's memory as it builds a permanent record of its staff expertise.
Lawson-West had been trialing Metafaq since November 2001 and the system has now been fully implemented into its website to help offer free legal advice. Through using Metafaq, frequently asked questions such as: How much does it cost to create a will? and What compensation am I entitled to if I'm injured? can be answered quickly and easily. www.lawson-west.co.uk
TURBO CAN NOW TRAWL DEEPER
London based Turbo10 has launched a new version of its search engine - called the Trawler - to bridge the gap between the surface web and the deeper reaches of the net. According to Turbo10 co-founder and MD Nigel Hamilton: "Traditional search engines like Altavista and Google are just scratching the surface because they use crawlers to index the web and so only cover static web pages. But a plethora of information lies in searchable databases - such as those run by universities and libraries - that just can't be accessed by crawlers."
For example Turbo10 Trawler users can now search on specific legal databases such as AustLII,one of the largest sources of Australasian legal materials on the Net with over 1.5 million searchable legal documents. Turbo10 has also started to divide resources into topic-specific collections such as: Legal, Reference, News, Sport, and Finance. Each collection combines a selection of traditional search engines and "deep net" engines to broaden the search. For example, the Legal Collection connects to a host of niche legal sites enabling searchers to perform specific legal based queries. More information about the Turbo10 Trawler can be found at: http://turbo10.com/cgi-bin/trawler.cg
KMS CASE STUDY - OBTREE AT BEVAN ASHFORD
Bevan Ashford has an intranet, web site and extranets. Our web pages have traditionally been created using Microsoft Frontpage. A limited number of internal staff have been able to create and manage these web pages and each person must be trained and licensed in order to use the software. This paper outlines the systems currently in place at Bevan Ashford to manage web content and the decision to implement a content management software solution to automate the future management and retrieval of information on our various sites.
For Bevan Ashford the main focus of the intranet is to deliver legal information and know how. The system contains best practice procedural guides, advice & opinions, precedent collections, catalogues, directories, databases and interactive forms. The intranet is the responsibility of the Information Services Department, which provides technical support and advice and develops knowledge sharing amongst all staff in order to meet client's needs efficiently and effectively. Through the Department client facing lawyers have access to a wide network of information resources, both internally and externally.
The Department consists of library staff who are professionally qualified in information and knowledge management and have considerable expertise in the fields of legal & commercial research plus professional support lawyers who are experienced solicitors with several years in practice. The synergy and collaboration, which exists between these two groups of professionals, is the department's key strength and is vital to the success of Bevan Ashford's knowledge management initiatives.
The Bevan Ashford web site has existed in its present form for a number of years. Although it has stood the test of time well, there was general agreement that the brochure format, on which it is based, needed to be updated. A new site is under development that aims, not only, to promote who we are and what we do, but also to share information with our clients. The key to the success of the site will be the provision of up to date, quality content. To achieve this we will use the same processes that are in place to develop the Intranet and information will be shared between the two web sites.
Bevan Ashford is committed to client service and practice development. In common with many firms we want to attract and retain high value clients and produce quality work. To help us achieve this we have also developed a number of extranets in response to specific requests from clients. At present these are self contained and based on working documents and email. Increasingly clients will want to tap into our value-added services directly, to receive news on developments and share information. Successful knowledge management is about achieving: increased profitability, quality & consistency, informed decision making and personal development.
Effective knowledge sharing combined with feedback from our clients and staff is vital to the future development and success of this firm. In order to achieve this the systems need to be accurate, effective and well maintained.
As in most firms, resources are finite and resources are focused where they can have best effect. The Information Services Department, including the PSLs, takes responsibility for managing and developing the intranet. They also produce the technical and sector information for the intranet and it is this content which will ultimately be incorporated in all our web sites. A major management problem for any firm is keeping such a system up to date. Quality checks are built into the process, and fee earning staff are given ownership of relevant sections and are responsible for checking or reviewing new information within these sections.
In the early stages of web development it is easy for the content owner to recall where information is held, which pages need updating and check for broken links or obsolete information. As new pages are introduced and new web sites are developed this becomes increasingly difficult to manage. The task of monitoring and maintaining each area of the web becomes more time consuming and there is less time available for creating and developing new information. There is also an increased danger that information will not get updated and mistakes will be made.
In order to maintain each web site the editors name and modification date are embedded into each page so that system users can verify who created the information and when. We also use a short date code to assist editors retrieve older documents for revision, using the Fulcrum Knowledge Server. Web pages are currently produced using Microsoft Frontpage. Each person working on web pages needs understand the package and the use of the style sheets and templates within it. We apply a naming convention and a strict file structure, which all editors must be aware of and apply in order to keep the system clean and easy to use for everyone. This requires on going training and policing which is time consuming and therefore costly.
The re-development of the Bevan Ashford Internet site gave us the opportunity to review our content management procedures. Whilst the intranet is still relatively small, managed and self contained the internet site would not be. Any information published onto the internet would need to meet three key objectives. It would need to appear quickly, be entirely accurate and be consistent with our brand. This could be achieved using our present methods, but would require time and a lot of support from the Marketing, IT and Information Services departments.
In discussing our requirements it became increasingly obvious that we would benefit from the introduction of content management software. This would confer a number of benefits, including: staff & time savings through automation; concurrent access for multiple users; publishing control - documents can be approved before being published; database functionality allowing scheduled publish/expiry function, archive facility and taxonomy structure to assist with workflow management & information retrieval.
We reviewed a selection of CMS solutions that included "out of the box" packages, bespoke packages and commercial packages. Each package was assessed against our agreed criteria, which included: ease of use, option to use thesaurus control/taxonomy, must allow concurrent access for multiple users, publishing control - preview or mirror site options, scheduled publish/expiry function, email notification to assist workflow, file size & image size restrictions, provision of security to protect site and provide multiple access levels for users, compatibility with Fulcrum search engine, compatible with existing applications to allow for the import and export of documents, and scalability.
C3 from Obtree was the system we ultimately chose as it performed well against our criteria. C3 is a commercial package and provides the benefit of a community of software programmers, reducing reliance on our in-house resources. The product is designed to grow and integrate with the host's systems and is designed to meet industry standards. There is ongoing investment in the development of the product and long term training and support for users and administrators are also available.
Whilst this decision was right for Bevan Ashford, there are a lot of options available and more arrive on the market each day. The best known of the established systems are Vignette and Broadvision, but a search on the internet for "content management" will deliver a range of alternatives. Alliaire Spectra was considered as an "out of the box" solution. The purchase costs of this option are low but the product would need to be customised and maintained internally. This would have required a higher level of IT input and ongoing support than we were willing to invest. The risks to us were that the solution would not deliver the benefits we had identified for the internet site. It would be an appropriate solution in many cases, especially for intranet development.
We also looked at two bespoke systems. The advantage of a bespoke system is the potential to tailor the solutions to suit your current and future needs. The risks are the size and stability of the producer and the level of support available. We were also concerned that there may be problems associated with the integration with our other software packages, making any amendments and improvements expensive. We would have wanted to bench test these solutions before a full implementation.
As firms develop increasingly complex web sites the need for content management technology will grow. Each organisation needs to consider its own budget, needs and processes when deciding whether to implement a software solution and if so which. www.obtree.com
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