Expert Matter Planning enables firms to more easily respond to and manage requests for both standard and alternative fee arrangements. Users can search and collate prior or existing matters and design preconfigured templates to build matter profiles. Matter Planning gives firms the ability to review work performed on prior matters to ascertain the duration, effort, and expertise required for the new engagement. It also brings together hours and roles to produce a fee estimate and a projected P&L so firms can ensure each new matter meets their pre-determined profitability thresholds. The innovative, flexible design handles all types of alternative fee agreements and monitors the matter through the entire life cycle.

“At Sheppard Mullin we understand that in today’s marketplace, a law firm must be flexible and value-driven when pricing client engagements,” says Kevin Combs, Chief Financial Officer for Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. “The ability to mine historical information to develop ‘win win’ arrangements is a wave of the future.”

One key advantage of Expert Matter Planning is its full integration with Aderant Expert. Integration allows the use of Expert rates, ranks, timekeepers, phases, and tasks all to be shared, ensuring a seamless movement from the matter planning phase into file opening, time recording, and billing. The tight integration with Aderant Expert also provides streamlined matter inception through cutting edge workflow processes, as well as accurate monitoring of the estimates created in the planning phase against actual time entries and reports on any variances.

As social networking and collaboration tools that started out in the home start to become more acceptable in the workplace it appears that the business environment as we know it is gradually changing.  One thing is certain; a major change in business culture brings new risks. As social data is shared between increasing numbers of sites the question of ownership becomes almost impossible to track.  Early signs indicate that employers and employees alike are convinced that they own their social data.  Perhaps it is time to ask some pertinent questions. For example, does social networking at work carry hidden legal challenges for both individuals and companies with potential for conflict? Are advances in technology once again outpacing the legal system?  And if so, to what extent may companies be sitting on a ticking legal time bomb?

The more business embraces social networking techniques to spread their messages and build their brands the more the dividing lines between personal and company data are becoming blurred.  It is not unusual for a piece of information originating from one employee in one company to pass through various social networking sites becoming retouched as it does so.  The legal position is at a very early stage of development.

To date legal cases involving disputes between employees and employers over who owns that data have tended to favour the employer.  In an early case involved the UK arm of a US business to business media publishing group (PennWell Publishing v Ornstein) it was ruled that the employer owned the Outlook contacts of a former journalist employee even though this list contained both work and personal contacts some of which had been brought to the company by the employee. This blurring between work and personal data has since spread far and wide.

In another case (involving a former Hays employee) a recruitment consultant moved confidential contact information to his LinkedIn account. The court reported that the consultant had planned to set up his own company in direct competition using the contact database concerned.  He had thought that once the contacts had been invited to connect to him and they had accepted on LinkedIn, their contact information ceased to be confidential because it had been seen by all his other contacts. This decision was one of the first to highlight the tension between businesses encouraging employees to use social networking websites for work but then claiming that the contacts and content remain confidential information at the end of their employment.  

It is a sign of things to come.  Sooner or later firms face the very real danger that employees or former employees will routinely contest data ownership issues in the courts.

An audit of 200 SMBs worldwide by the Internet filtering software company SpamTitan Technologies earlier this year revealed significant gaps in the measures firms are taking to protect themselves.  Almost every company in the survey allowed Internet access and some social networking applications in the workplace.  But while 76.4 percent said Web filtering, which helps companies define and manage policies for Web browsing at work, was important around half (49 per cent) of all respondents admitted not using one. At least 50 per cent of those without filtering said they were taking positive steps to secure themselves against the possibility of either attack or employee misunderstanding in respect of social networking applications. A further 16 per cent who had not yet done anything were intending to do something about it in the next 12 months.  This still leaves a significant proportion doing nothing at all.

Developments taking place in the US and the EU could soon provide a greater legal imperative for companies adopt formal social media policies. One such initiative is 2015.eu which calls for a charter of individuals’ Internet rights and aims to entitle Internet users to demand their information is removed from company systems even if it was collected with their consent.  Elsewhere the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently warned that even positive statements by employees in social media postings may constitute endorsements or testimonials and create liability for companies.  With so much information being posted online and shared the boundaries will continue to become increasingly vague.

Companies need to introduce policies and procedures and deploy technology to help them manage every employee’s Internet usage at the individual level. We are in a new era and it is incumbent on every company to include a corporate social media policy alongside their social networking strategy. Without such clear social media policies many employees will be unaware of their rights and employers risk being drawn into costly legal wrangles with their employees over data ownership disputes.

It is important to take steps well in advance to protect yourself or company. Failure to do so will potentially leave firms with significant data ownership-related legal wrangles. To date legal cases involving disputes between employees and employers over who owns that data have tended to favour the employer, but as we have seen all that could be about to change. Companies need to get to a point where they have sufficient measures in place for managing employee behaviour at the individual level.  

Timekeepers can view a single day or multiple days and sort entries by type of activity such as duration, date, client, matter, and more, to speed the review of potential time entries. Specific document names or IDs, phone numbers, and email addresses can be linked to clients or matters and then automatically associated in the future for maximum efficiency. Irrelevant items can be blocked to eliminate them from future tracking. Users can simply double-click an activity to bring up the time card for quick conversion to billable hours, or drag and drop the activity into the Time Entry list to automatically create the entry. The integration with Aderant Expert enables the immediate submission, review, and reconciliation of new time entries and gives timekeepers real-time access to key statistics such as daily billable and non-billable totals.

“Lost or unbilled time is a significant issue, especially as many firms are under pressure to maximize billable hours to meet profit targets,” said Bruce Stirling, Chief Financial Officer at Maples & Calder. “Aderant’s Found Time application has the potential to quickly capture more time and immediately increase revenue and profits.”

• The Found Time product will be demonstrated at ILTA 2010 in Las Vegas August 22-26 and will be generally available in September 2010 as an integrated component of Aderant Expert.

StarLaw features integrated document, records, and email management functionality and intelligent categorization of information by clients, matters, practice groups, and attorneys. The product has integration with Microsoft Office 2010, enterprise-wide search, and a flexible, easy-to-use interface. In addition, the product also has robust security and auditing functions, universal retention management, and “Grab and Go” support for offline use.

“StarLaw is the one tool I have found that meets the competing needs inside a law firm,” said the firm’s CIO Michael Cammack. “It provides ready access to documents and ease of use for attorneys and legal staff. It also provides reliable document ownership to apply retention rules and storage tiers for IT and Record departments and the ability to quickly apply legal holds and collect appropriate materials when required by Risk Management.”

• Minter Ellison has deployed the InterAction for Smartphone application from Calvis.  The solution, developed by Calvis, enables fee earners and mobile workers to conveniently access client, prospect and mandate intelligence stored within LexisNexis InterAction via their BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones while out of the office. Walkers, one of the largest offshore law firms with offices in the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jersey, London and Singapore, has also implemented the Calvis system.

• Australian law firm Freehills has selected Recommind’s MindServer Search to deliver next generation information access across the firm. Based on Recommind’s CORE (Context Optimised Relevancy Engine) platform, the MindServer Search deployment will form the backbone of Freehill’s knowledge infrastructure.  Implementation of the solution across its network of 2000 lawyers and support staff, will provide Freehills with capabilities to instantly crawl, index and access information from its Autonomy Worksite document management libraries, Microsoft SharePoint, Aderant Expert PMS and additional sources, as well as Matters & Expertise.  Freehills will deploy MindServer Search as the primary search technology making firm information and work product exponentially more usable and actionable across the organisation.

“Our first priority will be to utilise the benefits of MindServer Search across our intranet and knowledge repositories, thereby maximizing the significant investment that we have made to date in these areas,”
said Janet Young, COO/CFO at Freehills. “We believe the ability to find the right information just when you need it is essential for delivering a high quality and timely service to our clients.”

Freehills will also implement Recommind’s QwikFind search bar which provides instant access to
MindServer Search from within Microsoft Office applications (Word, Outlook, Excel) or from the Windows desktop toolbar, negating the need to launch a separate window or application in order to perform a firm-wide search.

• According to a study in ALB Magazine, Aderant remains the legal industry’s top technology vendor in the region, boasting 70%, or 21 of the top 30 firms across Australia and New Zealand. Aderant also represents half of Australia’s ten fastest growing firms and two major firms in Singapore as recently published by ALB. Since December 2009, seven firms across Australasia have selected Aderant Expert. Allens Arthur Robinson recently completed a major migration from Keystone to Aderant Expert. The project was completed on time and under budget in one year and was implemented across the firm’s global network of offices. Aderant has successfully implemented Expert 7.5 in several additional high profile APAC firms, including Slater & Gordon and Rajah & Tann in Singapore.

Perhaps surprisingly, his track record in retail is seen as a benefit as he is used to managing large companies that have been created by the acquisition of multiple software platforms and which now need consolidation and a clear longer term strategy. Likewise, his retail background is also seen as giving him a clear perspective on the use of IT as a means of delivering value, benefits  and services to user firms and their clients – as distinct from merely being a back office administrative overhead.

As the head of administration at one firm, currently on the tipping point of defecting, put it “On the strength of our meeting with Doug Hargrove, we are now prepared to include IRIS on our next ITT whereas previously we would not have even considered them.”