In a recent speach to the Americal Bar Association, Richard Susskind claimed that the current economic crisis is accelerating the fragmentation of legal services .

Further details here.

For customers who have been having problems exporting data in Excel spreadsheet format from Access 2007 please note that this bug has now been fixed in Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office released yesterday.

Exporting spreadsheets directly from the report preview or via code now works normally as it did in previous versions of Access so work arounds are no longer required.

If you have Windows Updates switched on you should get this update automatically, otherwise you will need to download from the Microsoft web site.

For help in automating or streamlining your management or client reporting needs please contact us.

 

Discover the  business benefits of greener computing in London on 6th and 7th May.

Free exhibition and  chargeable conference at Green IT 09

 

Lancashire-based Napthens LLP Solicitors has placed an £80,000 order with Solicitors Own Software to standardise on SOS Connect for integrated case and practice management across its five branches. Napthens expects to drive new efficiencies and improve working practices by replacing legacy case management systems inherited from the three mergers that the firm has experienced over the last two years. More...

Last week Skype released their much awaited client for the Apple iPhone.

This means that iPhone users can now make free Skype to Skpye calls and potentially benefit from cheaper calls rates to ordinary phones and mobiles when using a WiFi connection. You can also benefit from the Skype features of seeing who is online and instant messaging.

 

Law Society accredited legal software supplier, Select Legal Systems Limited has recently launched its hosted solution, LAWFUSION™ Direct. It has been designed for law firms that require a comprehensive practice and case management solution but do not want the headaches of administering a modern computer network.

LAWFUSION™ Direct removes the need to have the software installed on in-house servers, or the individual machines of remote staff, avoiding the overhead of maintaining the systems infrastructure and upgrades.

The service allows lawyers to work from home with equal efficiency as when in the office, giving them full access to all their files and documents and it exploits the benefit of paperless working, giving the added benefit of the storage cost savings that come with it.

LexisNexis today announced that London law firm Payne Hicks Beach (PHB) Solicitors has chosen to deploy LexisNexis Axxia dna as its web-based, business process management system of choice. More...

Linetime have added specific mortgage possession functionality to their Liberate legal software suite and developed a direct online link between Liberate and Her Majesty’s Court Services (HMCS) Possession Claim Online (PCOL) service.

PCOL is HMCS’s Internet based service for claimants and defendants, designed as a simple, convenient, cost-effective and secure way of submitting, responding and monitoring certain types of possession claim via the Internet.

The Liberate – PCOL interface provides firms involved in mortgage possession with significant benefits. Not only do they not have to complete any paperwork, but all the case data is validated intensively by the Liberate software prior to being packaged and automatically passed to the PCOL service.

In addition to the operational benefits the PCOL interface provides a rapid return on investment as there is an immediate and direct cost saving of circa 33% on claim submission fees. Linetime claim that the more socially aware lenders, keen to meet their ‘duty of care’ obligations to debtors, are starting to insist on dealing only with firms that use this less-costly online PCOL service.

 

Time Recording

Time Master	Contains most of the features that lawyers need although not specfically written for lawyers. A very flexible time and expense recording package. Some of the terminology is American but if you can live with that this is a very good time recording package albeit at a fairly high price for an iPhone app.	More
Others	There are numerous other time recording applications available (most not aimed specifically at lawyers) of varying degrees of functionality. The best place to check these out is the iTunes App Store.

 

Digital Dictation Applications

Bighand	Bighand have enhanced their Microsoft Exchange gateway so that it will accept standard audio/voice files from the iPhone. Using a simple voice recorder (there are many available from the iPhone Apps store) users can record their dictation and then email it back to the firm in the normal way. The gateway will then route the mail containing the voice file attachement to the lawyer's secretary.	More
nFlow	Developed in conjunction with iPhone application developer JOTOMI GmbH, the nFlow solution is a full iPhone application tat integrates tightly into the overall digital dictation workflow by allowing the lawyer to enter and send key information relating to the dictation such as the urgency and any guidance notes for secretaries etc.	More

 

Blogs

iPhone J.D.

iPhone J.D. is a site for lawyers using iPhones published by Jeff Richardson, an attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana

More

 

nFlow  today announced that it has developed an innovative and cost-effective solution that fully supports enterprise-class digital dictation from iPhone devices. Users of the iPhone and iPod Touch devices at nFlow’s customer organisations will now be able to send digital dictation recordings to their offices, for integration into their enterprises’ nFlow Digital Dictation System’s (DDS) Version 5.0 workflow, with the click of a button. More...

Many firms are looking at ways to reduce IT costs in the current climate.

One area that is often overlooked is support contracts. When purchasing a system it is often the case that not much thought is given to the costs and nature of the support contract, with firms often taking the standard support package offered by the vendor.

As a result many firms end up paying over the odds for support that they may not really need.

Now is a good time to review your support contracts and potentially renegotitate them on better terms.

Consider things such as:

1) How often have you used the support facilities in the past? In some cases it may be better not to have a support contract but simply to pay  for resolving problems on an incident by incident basis.

2) Do you really need the level of support cover that you currently have? For example if you have 24/7 or out of hours support do you really need this or would normal business hours coverage be sufficient? Also look at the response times and fix times that you currently have and see if these are appropriate.

3) Shopping around. For general PC, server and network support there are many companies to choose from and market is very competitive. For specialist systems and packages you may not have this option.

4) Try and renegotiate the terms of the contract so that you pay less per annum possibly in exchange for agreeing to extend the overall length of the contract.  Vendors that value your business and want to develop a long term relationship with you will normally be open to this.

 5) Are you using all the modules and features of the system that you initially purchased support for? With practice management systems for example it is common for firms to buy a range of additional modules (e.g. CRM, records management, web publishing etc) and never actually implement them or to stop using them after a period of time. If this is the case then you should not be paying support costs for these parts of the system if at all possible.

6) Consider bringing in a firm of cost reduction consultants to see if they can reduce your IT support costs while maintenaning a level of cover that is acceptable to the firm. Many of these companies work on the basis that they get paid a percentage of the cost saved so you have little to loose.

 

Google News Timeline, which has been launched today in beta form, allows users to view and organise news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and more on a zoomable chronological graphical timeline.