Asia Pacific Legal Technology Insider

Legal Technology Insider’s new newsletter dedicated to the Asia Pacific legal IT market is now out. Although they have covered APAC news on the famous Orange Rag blog and in the regular newsletters for many years, an edition specifically for the APAC region is now live.

Why now? Because there is just so much happening in the APAC market, both in terms of the legal technology industry and the surrounding legal business environment. As the editor Charles Christian writes in the first of his Christian Uncut columns (see page 3 of the publication - link below) "we are living in interesting times - far from being on the fringes of the legal world, what happens in the APAC region is now starting to shape the future of the North American and UK/European legal markets".

For the record, the definition of Asia Pacific for this publication includes not only Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong but also Japan, China/PRC and India.

The first edition can be found here.

Keep Up With Janders Dean

Although we've been somewhat quiet in the past few months - and we've neglected the blog slightly (like the Janders Dean HQ garden in fact), you can keep an eye on our activities over on Twitter at @jandersdean.

Janders Dean - New South African Client

Janders Dean has expanded the client base and the geographic reach of the company in recent months, with the addition of one of South Africa's leading law firms to the Janders Dean family.

With clients such as King & Wood Mallesons, Ashurst (formerly Blake Dawson), Reed Smith, Gilbert+Tobin, Norton Rose, Clyde & Co, Freehills, Middletons, Vodafone, BAE Systems, Willmott Dixon, Sparke Helmore, Stewarts Law, and many others placing their trust in our experience and expertise, Janders Dean continues to set the bar as one of the leaders in independent legal technology and strategic knowledge management consulting.

We look forward to growing our client base further in 2012, and serving our existing clients with the professionalism and pragmatism they have come to expect.

Janders Dean Snares Professor Richard Susskind OBE - 5th Annual Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference

After the phenomenal success of the 2011 event, which saw global knowledge and innovation thought leaders such as Chris Freeland of Baker & McKenzie, Tom Baldwin of Reed Smith LLP, Derek Schueren of Recommind, and Peter Williams of Deloitte Digital share their vision with over 130 senior delegates, Janders Dean have announced that they will again be gathering an unrivalled faculty of speakers to their 5th Annual Janders Dean Knowledge & Innovation conference.

In what will be one of his only open speaking engagements to the APAC market this year, international thought leader and legal innovation expert Professor Richard Susskind OBE has agreed to provide the keynote address at the conference.

Additional speakers involved in the conference faculty will include global management and partner representatives from Allen & Overy, Norton Rose, Freehills, Clayton Utz, Gilbert+Tobin, Vodafone, King & Wood Mallesons, and many other leading firms.

Combining exceptional international and domestic speakers, fresh and relevant content, and unrivalled peer-to-peer networking, the annual Janders Dean conference has led the market in APAC region for a number of years. It is widely considered by management and practitioners in the knowledge management, information technology and innovation, risk management, business development, and senior leadership roles, to be the only "go-to" law firm and in-house legal event in Australia.

The event also attracts international management attendees from leading suppliers in the UK and US. Organisations such as Autonomy, Microsoft, Phoenix Business Solutions, Lexis Nexis, Recommind, HighQ Solutions, DocsCorp, Headshift, OpenText, Endeca, and many others have attended the conference to hear the challenges faced by firms in the region, and to make themselves available for face to face time to delegates.

The 5th Annual Janders Dean Knowledge & Innovation conference will be held in Sydney on September 20th this year.

Each of the annual Janders Dean APAC events has reached capacity well in advance of the scheduled date, with 2012 looking to again be a sold out event. For further information on delegate bookings or sponsorship opportunities, please contact Justin North (justin.north@jandersdean.com).

(Better) Matter Management Migrates to Australia

We've been taking a little look at the shifting market in Matter Management in Australia while in town, and it appears that FWBS's MatterCentre solution has gained more and more attention in the past three months with new clients such as Slater & Gordon, McCabe Terrill and Moray & Agnew jumping on to the new arrival.

While the other legacy vendors such as such as Caseflow and Visualfiles appear to be asleep on a beach somewhere, FWBS seem to be becoming the system of choice for firms looking to move away from older case management and document assembly systems.

The most powerful message to date which would indicate their chances of future market domination in APAC (apart from the amazing Silverlight based navigation and the very cool iPad/iPhone integration within the product) is the fact that FWBS have planted resources directly in the region to sell and support.

We're predicting big things in APAC for enhanced matter management, and we expect that some of the older and less flexible case management vendors will start to hurt as they leave the region in the hands of resellers who have either fallen asleep counting their recurring maintenance revenues, are powerless to dictate the direction of the actual product, and/or who very rarely understand the market they are actually selling to.

Linklaters Purchases Autonomy

News here from Autonomy of their recent legal win with global giant Linklaters. The firm will be using the powerful search tool across their Knowledge repositories using the new user-orientated enterprise search platform powered by IDOL. Great win for the Autonomy gang, and validation that search is indeed still relevant and on the radar for Knowledge systems.

HighQ Solutions Moving & Shaking

News from HighQ HQ that they are on the move. The team have moved closer to our new favourite roof top venue (Mint Hotel's Sky Lounge) to Great Tower Street. All indications of even more exciting news and technology leadership from the group after an excellent Sunday brunch with Director Stuart Barr at Dishoom. If you have not already, make sure you follow their movements on Twitter @highqsolutions.