LawTech Summit Awards

Further to the previous posting, the full list of major awards from the recent APAC LawTech Summit are as follows:

* Best Practice in Knowledge Management - Gilbert & Tobin
* Security & Risk Management - Arnold Bloch Liebler
* Legal IT Team of the Year (Small/Medium Firm) - Minter Ellison SA/NT
* Legal IT Team of the Year (Large Firm) - Corrs Chambers Westgarth
* Most Innovative In-House Technology Project - Sparke Helmore

Janders Dean says a big congratulations to all the winning teams and also to those who were short listed and nominated in each category. Thanks also should go to the Chilli Marketing team for their continued support of the industry.

LawTech Summit Awards

We say a great big congratulations to our client firms Gilbert+Tobin and Sparke Helmore for their team wins at this evening's annual Lawtech Summit Awards in Coolum Australia. More information on their specific categories, projects, and other award winners when the hangovers fade...

Drag & Drop Emails Into MS SharePoint

We've been asked time and time again for advice and recommendations around technology which allows for easy and intuitive drag and drop of emails directly from a user's Outlook Inbox to a SharePoint Intranet or Document Management environment.

Ta da!

This is one of the best add ins to SharePoint we've seen in a while, and the seamless integration of the application with Outlook will make developers, designers, users and adoption/change management project personnel all very happy.

Colligo synchronises SharePoint document libraries to a user's email folders and content can be made available online only or cached for offline access. Emails and attachments can be moved or copied by the user with a simple and intuitive drag and drop or by setting Outlook rules. The add in captures standard message fields, synchronizing them to SharePoint and custom metadata can be instantly applied.

We think that this is groovy stuff peoples and we say 'bravo' to them - and bravo to James from the Detica team for also finding this and chatting through some of the possibilities of it. It certainly makes for an easy win - just beware that it may be temporary if SharePoint 2010 features and functionality provide this eventually out of the box - but for the Colligo price, we're recommending that it is a sensible approach, even if temporary.

If you're developing your document management related applications or Intranet sites using SharePoint, then you'll want to look at something like this to keep your users happy and increase general adoption.

You're welcome.

Stuart Barr Joins HighQ

Congratulations go to Ajay and the HighQ Solutions team (innovation leaders in law firm dealroom and extranet solutions) in London for their recent appointment of Stuart Barr as a director.

Those who know Stuart know that this is an excellent appointment, and that it is also evidence that HighQ is continuing its focus and commitment to the law firm space.

HighQ gain a new star given that Stuart has over 12 years of experience in web and e-business development, strategy and management and was previously head of operations at Headshift during their golden years. Prior to this, Barr was the Online Services Manager at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where he was responsible for the firm's various online activities.

The HighQ team celebrated their continued growth and success recently with the BLT (Banking Legal Technology) Portal client event, with Barr's appointment being toasted by industry friends and family. Read about the BLT Portal here.

Read about HighQ's work with Clifford Chance, Freshfields and others here.

Headshift Shifts New Heads

Early decade social media visionaries to the law firm knowledge management and collaboration space - Headshift - have been acquired by the Dachis Group.

Founded in 2008 by Jeffrey Dachis, Dachis Group was created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises through its Social Business Design global advisory practice, and technology implementation program. The company’s strategy is backed by a commitment from Austin Ventures to build and grow organically and through acquisitions.

Jeffrey Dachis has been a major player in the digital services industry as the co-founder of Razorfish which grew into one of the world's largest digital solutions providers with 2,500 employees in 15 offices across 9 countries with annual revenue of over USD$280 million prior to being acquired by Microsoft.

The news was broken by the original Headshift founders in an email to friends, family, prospects and clients late last night UK time and also in a nice spin blog posting today.

Lee and Livio stated in their email that "We are ready to move beyond the experimental phase to create real business transformation. Leaving behind the niche world of enterprise 2.0, we want to work with businesses at a senior level to run change programmes aimed at bringing their processes, internal IT and communications into the Twenty-First Century".

We wish the remaining team all the very best on this next phase, and our fingers are crossed that this injection will keep the brand pushing through barriers.

Continued Success for LexisNexis Visualfiles Australia

LexisNexis Visualfiles today announced a massive win for their case management solution with news that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) in Queensland Australia has successfully launched the product suite across 250 decentralised users.

The Australian market has proved very successful for LexisNexis over the past two years in the area of case and matter management (both for government and corporate), and we believe that continued successes will follow with the team that is now in place there.

The ODPP has an annual case load of over 12,000, and selected the Visualfiles solution based on a number of factors which significantly included a review of the product's ongoing success at the Queensland Crown Law Department.

TJ Viljoen (the new CEO of LexisNexis Australia) states in the press release that, "In today’s financial climate, automation is vital to ensure agility in a fast paced, and constantly evolving business environment. Lexis Visualfiles is designed to streamline working practices by providing access to all of your file management tools within an easy-to-use interface.”

Note the use of the word "streamline" and watch this space for the upcoming formal launch of the next generation in Visualfiles' evolution.

Full press release can be found here.

Litigation Readiness and Legal Hold

Janders Dean have featured in an article released today in CDR News Magazine (Commercial Dispute Resolution) discussing critical risk management issues around litigation readiness, legal hold process management for global in-house counsel groups, and the use of enabling technologies.

The full article can be found here.