Technology training? On a need to know basis

Many pioneers throughout history have been ignored. Their inventions, idealisms or artistic endeavours discounted or under appreciated during their life times. We are sometimes embarrassed to be wrong or stand up and say something that others with stronger opinions disagree with. However, history is a great story teller. It allows time to unfold truths that aren’t always visible to us at our position in time. Training is almost in this camp. Like a warm cup of hot, sweet tea, it sits in the background – often taken for granted. Where ‘intuitive software’ wins its sales war by “cutting down training costs” with ‘ease of use’, many maintain that a little more investment and attention to training is the birth of those eureka moments for techno-phobes “I get it!” can be a building block to help staff work faster and provide hands on help for others. It reduces desktop support, frustration and ultimately moves law firms toward quicker software integrations in future. Arguably by skimping on training, you keep your firm handcuffed to the past.

In technology we mostly talk excitedly of the “next big thing.” Many people are keen to identify the problems of the future and be respected and revered as a trend setter or product spotter.

For others it is refreshing to step away from this industry froth and talk of “maximising purchasing investment” or concentrating on internal mechanisms without the noise of new product salespeople, financiers and the media clouding judgement. The latter group is almost Swiss in its attitude - steady and slowly wins the race.

For those involved with training, change in the technology industry happens as Cathy Wallach of EncoreTech puts it “in incremental shifts.” In essence applications such as Word, Interwoven and OpenText remain much the same but economic and software developments bring improvements and additions.

Specialising in document management Cathy works with her co-founder, Stacy Gittleman, who was the first trainer working with her in her previous entity Perfect Access Speer (sold in 1998). Working across the USA, clients range from firms such as Clifford Chance to big corporates like Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley brought EncoreTech in to learn proprietary systems, write up manuals and then train them.

Surprisingly e-learning has not made much impact on the training business. Its used mainly to give students a quick heads up before EncoreTech hit the classroom. Cathy says these days the emphasis is on quick training or “what do you need to know training” so their emphasis is on being ultra prepared, getting it right and having a one-stop project manager for each client.

Other ongoing clients include Debevoise & Plimpton, McCarter & English and Cadwalader with two to three month training projects usually on the cards and big EncoreTech teams parachuting in, to get the job done.

But training is not all fabulous big contracts, there is a known under investment that pervades the corporate and SME world that mainly centres around smaller firms. Cathy says “the big firms talk to each other so they know they need training. In smaller firms they work so much on their own that they can’t understand the impact of an assistant spending ten rather than four hours on trying to fathom out how different document formatting works. Training increases productivity enormously.”

Getting clients mainly by referral, EncoreTech do the rounds at ILTA and LegalTech but say their plan is to stay at a level of around twenty five trainers to keep the business controlled and high quality. She comments “Stacy and I have both been in the training business for more than twenty years and we know its hard to maintain quality when you stretch to a hundred people.”


http://www.encoretech.com/

MOSS 2007 - It’s all in a handshake isn’t it?

Throw away your text books, stop going to seminars. The confusion is over. SharePoint can be sorted out with a firm, corporate handshake.

Its my business to try and understand the rudiments of legal tech offerings and sometimes it takes a while. You do what? It plugs in where? You are the greatest, most innovative software company ever seen?

Although MOSS (see explanation for what it is below) is taking rather a grip in law firms now, if you don’t get MOSS, you aren’t the only one. Sometimes as Citytech has discovered, IT directors really want to understand and buy from vendors but they might just not ‘get it’ or have the time to spend ‘getting it.’

So who’s doing what? Well it seems for the most part (from information from Tikit) that firms are liking the fact that intranets and extranets can be managed automatically through Sharepoint. If statistics are to be believed then up to around ¾’s of most intranets have out of date material on them. I imagine this doesn’t apply to those of you who’ve already invested in ‘search and delete’ style applications. You can sit smugly and view the inefficient kingdom below you. In addition although business intelligence is making waves, its not freely available within law firms so Sharepoint offers all that on a plate in an easy to use, one, two click, kind of viewing. For instance client rings lawyer ‘hmmm, you’ve overbilled me’, lawyer clicks into Sharepoint, inputs client name, client records come up and he/she can click again and see who worked on the matter, see who billed what and why, with no further involvement from finance or IT or asking a secretary to get back to the client.

I’ve had a look at the demo and its very intuitive, we will all know how to use this except our gran, who is too busy eating Jammy Dodgers and drinking cups of tea anyway. So top tip: if you are wondering what the hell to do with your intranets and want better ‘drill down’ info available to fee earners then this could be the application for you. The unusual thing about the financial information offered to the user is that they can check up on their own billable hours. No more surprises from management “Watson can I see you in my office.!” Fee earners can see what they’ve billed that month, for whom, compare with previous months and get a real feel for how they are doing internally before any trouble hits. A little bit of self management heaven.

There is also a self service HR section and I hear one big law firm has taken this up. Staff have an area where a bank of forms sit to allow them to fill in holiday or sick forms and ping them off for collation and automated record keeping.

If you are starting to get any creeping impressions that there is a lot of cross over with other applications then you are not far wrong. It seems all software suppliers have something that criss-crosses on someone elses turf these days and Microsoft Office Sharepoint is no exception. The general response to this doubling up is that you still need the Lexis Nexis InterAction, the OpenTexts, Interwovens, the Metastorms… well just about everyone else if you plan to do more complex work. Sharepoint are mainly offering an ‘ease of use’ interface with simplistic tools like DM which are perhaps useful if you don’t play in big boy vendor land.

The search gold rush. The 80 /20 rule.

Up until now most of us have been told about ‘searching’, in fact we may almost be obsessed. Its not about searching we hear, its about finding. Then its not about finding, its about finding what you want. Now its only about searching for things you don’t know about, which apparently is about 20% of all the items you need. The idea with Microsoft Office Sharepoint is that we mainly know where stuff is, so we want it it to be around two to three clicks away and then instantly viewed.

So now if you want to sound bright, ‘with it’ and generally techno savvy you need to say: “80% of all searching is really just about navigation.” Is it a eureka moment? I’m not sure but it certainly seems a step somewhere.

There are some key areas: financial, people and documents are your core and they leak into the intranet for staff to review everything necessary to complete their work and similarly can flow into the extranets or onto the internet for clients to have access to mini billing areas or knowledge.

The good bit. There is some free software called WSS in the whole deal (check still available) that allows you to create these billing areas or client rooms willy nilly. Apparently it’s a hook to get you interested. I have to say rather than a hook its more like a serious competitive advantage tool particularly if you get in early. I completely love the idea that I can click onto my lawyers website and see what, when, who, how in real time and without any fuss. This stuff is now not just for the big boys: anyone can get involved. Uses so far include one firm bringing seventy applications down into just a handful through use of this technology.

The main drive from Tikit is the reduction of time wasting and bringing together disparate data. Although others have this, also said this, like Solcara (less bespoke) it seems that the Handshake part of the outfit does really enable this to happen and with the easy recognizable template for users (modeled on law firm websites) its going to be difficult to ignore and might even catch on.

If we can only work out what its all about. If still unsure see me after class.

So what is the Tikit pitch?

Drag and drop functionality
saves a lot of copy and pasting.

Reduces “brain drain.” (☺)

Don’t be put off because you think its an enormous project, you can tackle small things at a time like a ‘desperate’ intranet site.

Increases fee earner access to real time financials

Intranets were the number 1 reason people were buying this but expansion is now rapid with a lot of buy in from law firms - particularly Lewis Silkin in the UK with a more complex DM project that says no to OpenText/Interwoven and yes to SharePoint on its own. Another reason is building a financial intranet on the back of the knowledge one. □


What is MOSS?

Sharepoint or as it’s now called Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) has been around for a while but despite seminars and lots of ‘oh my god, it’s the Next Big Thing’ type of information, unless you see a demo you will probably be a bit puzzled about what it is so don’t be worried if you still haven’t got a clue. Its essentially an interface (or one button or one initial screen) that clips onto some middle software like Handshake which then clips onto or ‘talks to’ your essential tech software like Lexis Nexis InterAction, OpenText (formerly Hummingbird) or Interwoven, Thomson Elite or Aderant to deliver all your current applications through a simple icon on the desktop. Within Outlook for instance you can have a Microsoft Office Sharepoint button that connects to everything without the user needing special skills and their view is not the InterAction or Thomson Elite view, it’s the Sharepoint view. The Sharepoint part is that its all blindingly obvious for fee earners: if they know how to use Outlook then they can navigate all the stuff they need for client billing, contacts, knowledge and even have their own little world that provides a unique space for their type of news, matters and office announcements. (You set rules to achieve the look and feel required).

Points of note.

Its not the same as OpenText or Interwoven Sharepoint: their Sharepoint integration only brings their software to the party. You need Handshake (who are reselling through Tikit in the UK) to connect to all your other applications like Lexis Nexis InterAction, Thomson Elite and the other main players.

Who is the star in the Microsoft Office Sharepoint, Handshake, Tikit trio?

Its hard to say, Tikit for being influential in the UK and clever enough to explain it and sell it to you? Microsoft Office Sharepoint for developing such an easy interface and perhaps for coming down off their hobby horse and really working with legal vendors? Or Handshake for developing some communications software that just worked it all out for everyone?

Probably they all get equal votes but Handshake is undoubtedly garnering some serious respect for developing software that has brought to life the Sharepoint concept. In my view companies working on bridging applications are the ‘ones to watch’ for they are beginning to rule the world.


www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

The evolution of marketing in law firms

Twenty four years ago law firms in Britain were freed from legal constraints and allowed to market their services for the first time. Guilty of poor practice in the early years, marketing staff spent their time booking places on IBA conferences for annual partner jollies and organizing seminars with such heady titles as “the legal implications of food dustings for manufacturers.” A few things happened to move firms out of this rut. Law firms started to operate in an increasingly competitive environment, then skilled marketing directors were hired from outside the industry. The legal press also started to take an interest in maverick partners and their negative affect on firm performance until marketing took on a more professional look by the late 90’s. Part of this development was the emergence of customer relationship management software. Now CRM technology is a staple purchase in law firms, along with strategic plans, measuring how successful marketing is and gathering information for analysis from fee earners and clients to increase bottom line profits.

Dan Von Weihe who dominates the CRM software space, heads up the seventeen strong team at Lexis Nexis InterAction. Lexis Nexis bought InterAction two years ago and hold trophy site Berwin Leighton Paisner. Janet Day their IT Director can show that InterAction is second only in use to Outlook. It is viewed widely in the industry as the most successful CRM implementation achieved to date. Dan says vendor competition is the big change for him but having the likes of Microsoft pitching their software is increasing awareness of his. “Ten years ago there wasn’t anyone in the market but the last five years has seen, Microsoft CRM, Client Profiles who partner with Microsoft, Pivotal, SalesLogix, Aspective, legal practice management vendors providing marketing modules and Goldmine arrive. Our sales are up because of the increased awareness with a recent eleven office win from the Maitland Group.”

Reed Smith’s, Meirion Jones who is Executive Director of the firm’s Clients & Markets Group and CRM selection committee has a career that spans top law firms like Allen & Overy. His team recently signed Client Profiles. “CRM technology is a facilitator, nothing more. Relationships are built between people and always will be. However as law firms become larger it becomes more difficult to manage client relationships and build them. An average client might be advised by ten different departments in ten different countries. If a law firm is trying to say it will be consistent then this is where CRM technology can help. It can capture all the insights from client and store them in the system. It takes away the feeling that clients are dealing with a complex organisation and creates a village feel.” The Client Profiles system is just one tool amongst a number that they use. “We also have client plans, dedicated training and investment bank style business analysis. A client plan looks at tactical ways to develop the relationship. So if data security is an issue, we can go speak to the client and say we have this expertise ask who we should speak to and put an individual in to develop the relationship.”

Whit McIsaac, President and CEO, at Client Profiles, who has spent twenty four years in the business says law firms need to expand the use of CRM technology beyond simple mailing lists and event management.” They need information relating to the people, companies, clients, matters and entities that they deal with on a daily basis.” Client Profiles now have nine implementations under way in law firms across the UK and USA.


Susanne Pugsley, Head of Marketing at Winckworth Sherwood, who have nine IT staff and two marketing staff, soon to be three, is an unusual combo of e commerce and marketing. “I did some dot.coms and media before spending time at Norton Rose, Hammonds and Morgan Lewis but my roots are classic marketing” She says. When she joined Winckworth Sherwood, they didn’t have a strategic function so Susie is in the midst of reviewing CRM systems. Her primary task once a system is selected is to improve internal communications. “I’ve already built a weekly reporting system on the intranet to have everyone tell us what they are doing. This way we can let everyone know about client wins, lunches, speaking opportunities, accolades and what deals are closing. It’s been eye opening for the partners.”

Time is the main constraint with use of CRM she thinks. “The simplicity of a CRM systems is important because if partners can’t do it by three clicks, you’ve lost them.” On the client side she says. “It’s important to be targeted and have a data cleansing process with a careful eye on best practice. We ask clients to self select their news letters from our internet because we don’t want to blitz people with emails anymore.” She uses a company called Concep an email marketing provider to monitor effectiveness. “You can see what is opened and analyze success. It’s all a two way communication these days.”

She adds that clients do want information by emails and tells me about a recent innovative move “We sent our partner with a e brochure on a data stick to a conference. It meant they weren’t giving away heavy brochures and we could amend the information right up until the last minute. Although she admits it is a pricey option because prices of data sticks vary but adds “you can track how people use the sticks.” Of other new ideas like blogs she says most law firms really mean microsites which is something she did previously for Morgan Lewis. Winckworth Sherwood also have a blog where trainees talk about life at the firm. Susie tried podcasting in the past which costs around £3000 each time. “I think it works best for private client law firms because of the people element.” One thing increasingly being used she says is webinars at the desk which is becoming a hot tool because of bandwidth capability. “You don’t have to travel and can sit with sandwiches and catch up on important topics.

As to whether partners should be involved with marketing or left to professionals, she says this it is essential they are fully involved. “Clients all say they want technical excellence, a communicator, value added services, sensible billing and fixed fee. Fee earners really do have to call their clients and go for dinner to keep relationships alive.”

Susie points out that marketing is still illegal in Italy and says “there are so many cultural things to look out for with global campaigns. The French like raised paper with thick print. Germans want a website in German or they won’t deal with you. Spain has the highest data protection of anywhere and in France you have to have individual consent from each member of staff to profile them on websites. There is a lot of thinking to do before a global marketing push.”

Taylor Vintner case study














Taylor Vinters, IT Director Steve Sumner, who has worked in the technology field for twenty six years, started his search for a CRM system after a Business Development Manager hire was put into the firms business plan. “We needed a system that would help support the person in what they had to do” says Steve. Starting with a clean slate he reviewed the leading market offerings and arrived at a listthat included Goldmine, Microsoft CRM and Lexis Nexis InterAction. Although the incoming Business Development Manager and Marketing Director had used Goldmine previously, after further review the product was discounted. Lexis Nexis InterAction was eventually also discounted because of costs associated with integrating the software with their Oracle based Miles33 practice management system.

Steve, who has worked for firms such as IBM and Avis Rent-a-Car, says he then looked more closely at Microsoft CRM which he eventually chose. “I felt what we were doing with SharePoint and the intranet would open up a wealth of possibilities for the future and offer exciting ways to deliver information to our people. We talked to a few Microsoft Partners, Microsoft themselves, had some demo’s and a number of project determination meetings. We believe we were one of the first law firms to do so.”

He liked the Outlook style which he says: “is a natural extension to what people are using already.” The project also fitted in with a three year licensing platform Taylor Vinters had which offered good cost savings and flexibility in the budget.” Now we have the core system and integration in place, the plan is to embellish that core to add layered security, improved mail merging, event management and put in place data processing procedures and use InfoPath to get quality data into the system. We are talking to people like Client Profiles and C360 to see where their add-ons fit into our plans.”

Steve chose reseller consultant ISC Software Services to partner with Taylor Vinters for the implementation and integration development work. Steve says “ISC are a local company who have supplied Taylor Vinters for some years with hardware, software and DR services so we knew them well, they have reasonable rates and the people knew us and what we did as a firm, this was instrumental in choosing them. We gave them a spec’ and invitation to tender document, asked for a fixed price and a four phase plan. They costed it, agreed it and delivered it in six weeks.” He does add that there was a refinement process and prep time before the green light.
In order to facilitate the project Steve has astutely seconded one of his team to marketing for a year. The IT member is demonstrating procedures for data entry and showing marketing staff how to configure the system and key in effectively.

Inititally work was focused on consoliating existing databases and matching the information to their accounts records. “It’s partly to validate client details.” says Steve. The marketing team is now adding new client information and checking for accuracy. “It’s going to be a major cleansing process as well as adding client history which should help everyone understand the contact clients have had with the firm. The plan is to help us to make better decisions by having client documents, data and billing available and ultimately to surpass client expectations, all through a SharePoint interface, and where detailed information is needed then the native CRM screens can be used.”

Taylor Vinters, who are based in Cambridge, have five IT staff . Steve is the IT Director, there is a network manager, helpdesk, IT manager and a developer is just in the process of being hired to reduce costs on external consultancy work and to further develop what the firm can do with SharePoint 2007. Taylor Vinters are an award winning law firm and on the Easyjet and OGC preferred panels.






www.interaction.com/
resold through tikit

http://www.tikit.com/

www.e1business.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/crm/default.mspx

http://www.clientprofiles.com/

http://www.iscnet.co.uk/
http://www.iscsoftware.co.uk/

http://www.concepglobal.com/

David Fryer, CEO, BigHand digital dictation tells us how things are going one year after the management buyout

Karen Jones interviews David Fryer, BigHand CEO, who was previously Managing Partner at law firm Taylor Walton


Buyout mania has hit legal tech in the last few years with tech vendors being snapped up as though hot bargains in a sale at Harrods. But one management team which consisted Stephen Thompson and Gordon McAlpine who sold their interest in, BigHand Digital Dictation weren’t devoured by hungry venture capital shoppers: it was taken over by it’s own staff.

In a deal that took more than a year to complete, the new BigHand team and their backer (LDC) took ownership of 400 clients, a 57 percent of digital dictation market share and annual sales of over £7million. And from July 2006, they really had just one job – ‘don’t drop the baton.’ The buyout team, which consists David Fryer, ex managing partner at law firm Taylor Walton as Chief Executive Officer, Simon Lewis, who developed the software as Development Director, Steve Butterworth who now continues as Sales Director and similarly Jonathan Carter – Client Solutions Director, who all have equal shares. LDC say they have a ‘significant share holding.’

Although sheer speculation and figures are private, I estimate the deal must have looked something like 40% management team to 60% LDC with Gordon and Stephen Thompson leaving with a couple of million each. As David Fryer, who attended law college in Chester, comments. “It was a major negotiation and fortunately we stayed on very good terms with both Gordon and Stephen.” Which does say something about the four staff who undertook the MBO: it is rare to be anything but exhausted and resigned to your fate after a deal of this magnitude. The champagne would have flowed when final documents were signed.

Of all the vendors in the legal tech space, BigHand is one the success stories of the legal sector. Founded in 1996, the then founders Stephen and Gordon had done well and started toying with the idea of selling up in around 2004. They were fortunate enough to have David Fryer in their sights. David, who was a phenomenally successful managing partner at Taylor Walton, who sit below the Top 100 on the law firm charts, had got the firm ship shape and was looking for a new challenge. In 2004, David took a leap of faith, resigned and awaited fate’s calling card. It arrived in the shape of Stephen and Gordon.
“I took Stephens role really” says David, who in his managing partner role had taken on the technology purchasing, amongst others projects and had got a firm handle on the issues. “I joined to run the company and processes and although I only realised later on, this allowed Stephen to get their MBO process underway.”

Gordon and Stephen were advised to leave the deal ‘clean’ in other words walk away once it was done, which David, who is originally from Grantham in Lincolnshire,
Says. “Was pretty easy. I was doing Stephen’s job and Gordon dealt with the top twenty law firms in the market which meant relatively little selling to do and it wasn’t difficult for someone new to take over.”

David takes us back in history to show us pretty much how everything evolves: by seizing opportunity. “When the company started out it was focused on speech recognition and called VoiceWrite.” He says. “It was nothing to do with digital dictation.” Although he wasn’t involved, it sounds like it was a bit of a thankless task selling the concept. He says that a typical pilot of ten staff had similar results each time. “One would love it, eight couldn’t wait to stop using it and one would have muddled through using it because they had been told to by the boss.” We both laugh but we have the benefit of hindsight and BigHand’s obvious success to erase what must have been a difficult early start for the company. BigHand got no roll outs so in ’99 frustrated they did a review, spoke to clients and clever old Simon Lewis sat down and wrote the first version of ‘Total Speech’ which at first blended speech and digital dictation.” It didn’t take long for BigHand to scrub the speech and focus 100% percent on digital dictation and as they say the rest is history: Total Speech 2 launched as pure digital dictation. “Workflow is the clever bit though.” Says David. “It’s all so much better than analogue because work is visible. It stores in Outlook so support staff can look at a screen and see work needs doing and what work has been sent around to other staff.”

David says initially secretaries were wary of the software and suspected they would lose their jobs but in reality, late nights getting urgent reports out became a thing of the past because work was suddenly available for everyone to see. Gone were the days where you didn’t dare ask a stroppy support person to help. “It also highlights how many minutes of work are on each item so support staff can choose items dependent on how much time they have available.”

It sounds like an ideal system to start causing some mayhem with secretaries in terms of how much work they are doing but David squashes any attempts to see BigHand software as a measurement tool. “Some instructions might be 2mins in size but have a whole days work on them. When we asked clients about this, they said the system mirrored what they knew already in terms of how staff were working.”

Developments in digital dictation now include Blackberry integration and in the future David sees the return of speech and increasingly using their software over the telephone. Already you can speak instructions into the BlackBerry, click send and it sits in the workflow queue ready for assistants back at the mother ship to action or type. The server has a 4 digit passcode but that is the only block between fee earners and getting work done.

Which is also some good news for smaller firms (and increasingly bad news for device vendors), the move to the Blackberry (BigHand also works on Windows mobile) has meant it isn’t essential to buy devices anymore, Dictation can happen on the Blackberry with a press and a ping into workflow. “It’s really for more complicated dictation that devices will be needed. Which is something to do with the breadth of legal language. Apparently lawyers use something like 30,000 words compared to the medical profession who use 5,000. BigHand charge an additional fee for mobile use.

The next phase for BigHand is ‘unleashing into the public sector’. “Property and accountancy are also looking promising areas.” Says David. Surprisingly accountants dictate a lot less than lawyers do with a 80/50 ratio and private client lawyers dictate the most.

There are eighteen suppliers in the market but many offerings are connected to practice management software so may not be so obvious. Top choices it seems are BigHand, Winscribe and nFlow with BigHand and Winscribe having a similar pricing policy. “There is plenty of market out there for everyone and we don’t talk about competition mainly because we believe our software is better, easier to put in and we are fast at doing it.” Says David.

So its all good news so far, I wondered what can go wrong? David is honest and upfront. “Whilst every organisation should prepare to become obsolete, we do see some resistance from firms who have lawyers with good typing skills. They can’t see why they need it. Fortunately we are seeing firms who have made that kind of decision in the past to reduce overheads come back to us. It’s an error to think its all just about typing. It’s not, it’s about work and instructions flowing easily through the system. A large part of dictation is instructions and in a busy, volume practice this software eases work burdens.” As well as this David thinks a move to proprietary software would be a wrong turn. “Buyers are choosing and they want software to do everything easily. Also areas like images could take us down the wrong path. Its easy to get distracted.” David thinks SOA (service orientated architecture) has been the successful route for them. “Anyone can access us through SharePoint and we work with big players like Metastorm, Visualfiles, Interwoven and OpenText, which is where most of the demand is. It’s good software and people like to use it.”

BigHand have opened in the USA and have found a fresh, bountiful market. “Analogue use was plentiful in its day and for some reason, digital dictation just didn’t get on the radar for firms, they went from analogue to typing with nothing in the middle. Says David. “The US is well ahead of the legal market on its own issues like VOIP because of the size of the country and e-discovery because of litigation but they are behind on these types of software because they assumed it would die out.” The whole team are spending a lot of time pinging back and forward to the US and Steve Butterworth the sales director has now relocated there. ©

www.bighand.com

This first appeared in http://www.citytechmag.com/