Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council have purchased Axxia DNA.

Tameside is an "excellent" rated council and the only local authority in the north west to receive the
top CPA rating of four stars with a judgement of "improving strongly". The council recently won the
coveted “Best Achieving Council” award at the prestigious Municipal Journal Awards 2007.

As thelead authority for the Government Connect project – currently a £22.5m initiative led by Tameside,
DCLG and the Cabinet Office to provide a common infrastructure for secure electronic interaction
between local government, central government and citizens - Tameside is at the forefront of the
service transformation agenda, and its in-house Legal Services enjoy a correspondingly excellent
reputation.

The council’s procurement of DNA underpins its strategy of further improving the quality
of its Legal Services by using a next-generation platform which can offer internal and external
clients a seamless, business-orientated service, whilst supporting the service’s longstanding Lexcel
accreditation.

Sandra Stewart, Tameside’s Borough Solicitor commented on the decision; “The choice of Axxia’s
DNA system was made after a comprehensive procurement process. We concluded that Axxia
DNA was the only truly web-enabled system which met the current and future needs of my service,
and Axxia as a supplier showed a real enthusiasm to work with Tameside on a partnership basis,
recognizing the mutual benefits that this contract should deliver. By deploying Axxia DNA across a
diverse service, including the team which provides legal services to the Greater Manchester
Pension Fund, we are looking to improve the quality of our overall service and meet the business
demands of our internal and external clients for electronic service delivery and comprehensive
management information.”

Part of the Tameside implementation will involve significant conversion of data from the Council’s
existing Datix system. Once fully deployed, the 35 user DNA system will comprise case
management, electronic files, time recording, KPI’s, conflict checking, workflow (including Lexcel)
and legal business process management, Capella management reporting and PDF docs to
create electronic case bundles. The implementation will be incremental and, over time, integration
with Tameside’s existing systems is planned.

Legal Files Software, Inc. has enhanced the integration between IBM Lotus Notes^® and the Legal Files case and matter management software. 

 

With the Legal Files/Lotus Notes “COM Add-In,” any e-mail message, appointment or task in Lotus Notes can be saved and referenced to a file in Legal Files.  Once saved, these items can be accessed from within the file—as if the item had originated in Legal Files.  Users may also save items received in Lotus Notes without a file reference.

 

“This integration means that a legal professional can save all his or her matter related e-mails, calendars and tasks in one place directly from the Lotus Notes program,” Legal Files CEO John Kanoski explained.  “We are now using our advanced web technology to communicate between Lotus Notes and the Legal Files database so users can utilize the tools from anywhere in the world,” he said.  “It is an extremely attractive system that can significantly increase the user adoption rate of matter management by placing this functionality in the already-familiar Lotus Notes application.”

 

In addition to Lotus Notes, Legal Files also offers exclusive, seamless two-way integrations with Microsoft Outlook and Novell GroupWise.

Interesting article at Law.com on how some law firms are enabling their IT staff to work directly with clients  to help them with their technology needs and to help them get the most from the technology offered by the firm. Ultimately this is a way of helping to sell your services competitive advantage in technology and in helping to retain clients through technology integration.

Some larger UK law firms have been doing this for a while particularly with respect to Extranets and collaboration portals. However, it is not widely seen outside of the top 50 UK law firms and to this extent many firms are missing a trick. If you have IT staff with the appropriate communication skills and business acumen then this is a good way of increasing the return on investment from your IT spend and provides a new way to grow your business.

nFlow have announced that Trowers & Hamlins, one of the UK’s Top 100 law firms with 8 offices located in the UK and Oversees, has selected and implemented a firm wide roll out of nFlow digital dictation. The decision to select nFlow was largely based on their unique ability to deliver a proven Microsoft SQL Server replication solution.

Having carried out an internal technical and HR review to assess the potential benefits of implementing a digital dictation system the firm invited nFlow, as well as two other competitive suppliers, to demonstrate the features and functionality of their respective product suites. With the international team spanning 5 offices the ability to share work between offices was key to the firm, so a fundamental requirement of the chosen system was the ability to offer global scalability and resilience without sacrificing performance at the user level.

Marina Herbert, IT Manager, Trowers & Hamlins “nFlow was the only digital dictation supplier with the ability to offer a fully proven solution with the replication capabilities we recognised would be able to support our operation and with clients where SQL replication is in place and working. Doubt was cast over the feasibility of replication however we followed up references very closely and found that they were all overwhelmingly positive, not only about the capabilities of the product, but also about the level of service, experience and expertise of the nFlow team.”

By effectively using replication nFlow can deliver a resilient segmented system that acts as a global service provider. All users can see all the data they have permission to across the global system however if there is a link problem between sites the segments act like individual systems that automatically update themselves as soon as the link is re-established. The users are not affected by this as they can still dictate and transcribe locally as if nothing has happened. As users connect to a local replicated database server they can access data from across the whole organisation but don’t suffer from problems such as slow performance of loading data in the client application.

“The replication capabilities of nFlow digital dictation have already been tested. Our Oman office recently had to shut down all servers for 4 days as a result of a cyclone warning. Within 2 hours of restoring the servers the Oman office had full access to global data again on their local server. We have also had blips on our links with our Manchester office and the users have not even noticed. Replication has definitely proven itself.” Stated Herbert.

nFlow digital dictation was initially implemented in the London office before being rolled out to the entire firm in a 6 week period. Working closely with the nFlow projects and training team, nFlow and Trowers & Hamlins have carried out training for every single user and feedback has been extremely positive.

“We have found that secretaries and fee earners alike have embraced digital dictation. The significantly improved sound quality coupled with the speed at which work gets on to the system are just some of the improvements that users have mentioned. Flexible working and home working users have also benefited from the new system with secretaries downloading dictations on behalf of users, previously we had had issues of tapes being couriered in to the office, getting lost or damaged, we don’t have to worry about this any more.” Continued Herbert.

Rob Lancashire, nFlow Sales & Marketing Director commented “We believe that we are unique in our ability to prove nFlow’s scalability advantage with Microsoft SQL Server replication. It is not an easy task and has taken a number of years to perfect, it is not something you can just turn on without the knowledge or experience that prevent issues such as lost data. With 10 firms having now implemented nFlow with the replication capabilities we feel we stand apart from the competition. Ultimately we are a technology company first and foremost so I would urge any firms out there who are having problems with the performance of their digital dictation system over multiple offices to give us a call and we will be happy to discuss how we can make nFlow digital dictation work effectively for them using replication.”

AlphaLaw have introduced fully electronic SDLT5 Certificate submission and URU authentication in the latest version of AlphaLaw-Uno.

URU authentication is a service provided by GB Group which allows automatic electronic identity checks to be undertaken on individuals, eliminating the need for manual paper based checks. The service works by cross checking public information from a variety of sources including electoral registers, utility company records and credit reference agencies. The service is offered via an industry standard Web Services interface so in theory could be integrated with a number of modern case management systems of with bespoke solutions.

Article from Janet Day in Computer Weekly on why law firms need good IT security .