CHANGE TO NEXT PUBLICATION DATE
As it is only once every 15 years that the American Bar Association holds its annual conference in the UK, to enable us to cover this month's ABA London event and report on its proceedings this side of the summer/long vacation, we are holding back the publication of the Insider by one week. This means the next issue will now appear on 26th July.

The next issue of the Insider (No.105) will carry a full report and analysis of the implications of Microsoft's recently announced "dot-net" initiative and what, if anything, it could mean to the legal technology market.

HUMMINGBIRD AND KLA FALL OVER DOCS
Hummingbird and document management specialists Kramer Lee & Associates have fallen out over the issue of support services for PC DOCS. Although the row has been rumbling on throughout the spring, when KLA first announced it was developing utilities for the rival iManage system, matters came to a head last week when DOCS users in the UK received a letter from Hummingbird sales director Chris Prier advising them that the company had terminated KLA's reseller agreement and that, as of 24th July, KLA would no longer be authorised to sell or support PC DOCS or any other Hummingbird products and services. Hummingbird has also terminated an agreement to sell certain KLA DOCS-add on products in the USA.

KLA co-founder Tom Lee told the Insider that since the Hummingbird letter was issued, KLA had received "overwhelming support" from customers saying they would prefer to continue to use KLA, rather than Hummingbird, to support their document and knowledge management environments. "From a commercial point of view, Prier's tactics look like increasing our turnover," added Lee.
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KEANE QUITS CMS FOR FALCON
John Keane, who until last week was Solution 6's European sales director with responsibility for the CMS Open practice management product, has left the company to join Falcon Software, which is now part of the Belgium-based REAL Software Group.

Keane, who has a reputation for being one of the most effective salesmen in the legal systems market - a former colleague said "Never mind selling refrigerators to Eskimos, John could sell them snow and winter holidays" - will be responsible for business development throughout Europe, including the establishment of a new UK based operation.

Although Falcon's PRAXIS and ACIS products are already used by a number of major law firms in Europe, including Linklaters Alliance, Keane predicts the next couple of years will see a growing demand for a European-based PMS product "as larger firms start to outgrow their current offerings from Elite, CMS and Keystone and look for something more powerful".

Simon Price becomes European sales manager at Solution 6 looking after CMS and CABS. Last month also saw Mike Bailey quit CMS as UK business manager.
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MAKING A COMPLETE ASP OF YOURSELF
According to a new report published by technology analysts Bloor Research, the next five years will see a tenfold increase in the size of the ASP (application service provision) market in the UK, with CEO Robin Bloor predicting that "ultimately all IT user organisations will either become an ASP, an ASP customer or both".

Microsoft has already announced it will be launching an ASP operation later this year when Exchange, SQL Server and Windows 2000 become available on a rental basis. On the legal systems front, along with Keystone's well publicised Keystone Online ASP initiative, Elite has confirmed it will be launching a UK version of its e-Connect ASP service "soon". Technology for Business has announced plans to launch an ASP operation for smaller firms later this year. In the most recent development, Ramesys - the group which acquired The Data Base earlier this year - has now completed the acquisition of MCorp of New Jersey giving it the ability to provide a complete single source, end-to-end ASP service.

TIME TO SAY GOODBYE TO WORDPERFECT?
It seems as if it was only a few weeks ago that Corel issued its last profits warning. In fact it was only a few weeks ago that Corel, the current owner of WordPerfect, issued a profits warning. But now we have another one to coincide with the announcement of a $23.6million loss in Corel's most recent fiscal quarter, which ended on 31st May.

Corel once again blames the poor figures on dwindling sales of its WordPerfect products within the Windows market and disappointing sales within the Linux world, where the company is currently concentrating most of its software development efforts. However, in the most chilling warning to-date about its longer term prospects, chief financial officer John Blaine said that if the company did not secure additional financing and reduce costs "in the near term" Corel's "ability to continue would be in substantial doubt". Perhaps this is now the time to start that long-postponed migration to Microsoft Word?

In fact it has not been a good twelve months for either Corel or its president and founder Dr Michael Cowpland. Earlier this year the company (the name is an acronym for Cowpland Research Laboratories) saw its proposed merger with Inprise/Borland collapse in acrimonious circumstances. Inprise CEO Dale Fuller was reportedly so angry when he learned the true state of Corel's finances that he ripped an office door from its hinges. And, at the end of last year, Cowpland himself was accused of insider trading - allegations he strenuously denies - after he sold Can$20million-worth of Corel shares just one month before the announcement of exceptional losses prompted a 20 percent fall in the price of the company's shares.

But as the Financial Times pointed out in a recent profile, Dr Cowpland's "flamboyant" lifestyle (despite being born in Bexhill-on-Sea in England he is now regarded as Canada's answer to Donald Trump) has stirred up envy and made him enemies. Double parking his Porsche - licence plate COREL - outside a shareholders' meeting did not win him many friends. Nor did attending a company event accompanied by his wife who was wearing a black leather catsuit, with gold breastplate and 15 carat diamond "nipples", that is rumoured to have cost Can$1million.
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CD-ROMS GET SMARTER
iQrom Communications (020 7493 3211) has launched a new updatable CD-Rom format - CD-U - that allows CDs to be automatically updated over the internet. The system compares the original and new versions of any digital data and creates an amendment file incorporating only the variations from the original data. The file is then integrated via the internet through the user's hard drive, effectively resulting in a new CD. iQrom say a legal publisher currently manufacturing and distributing 100,000 update CDs every month could save $2million a year by moving to the new system.

LAND REGISTRY IN NEW E-CONVEYANCING MOVE
The Land Registry has released more information about the new low-cost Land Registry Direct service (020 7917 5939) that will provide online access to some 17 million registered titles in England & Wales and become a key element in the National Land Information Service (NLIS).

Land Registry Direct replaces the existing dial-up service used by 6,500 subscribers, who currently make on average 100,000 "views" a month, with a new system combining increased functionality with lower charges and targeted at a wider audience of "conveyancing professionals".

The ability to view and download title plans showing clearly delineated boundaries for registered titles and access to "deeds referred to" on the register that were previously only available in paper format, are two of the new features of Land Registry Direct. The system is also designed to speed up and streamline the conveyancing process - in excess of 100 million filed images will be scanned into the Registry's database by 2004.

Chief Land Registrar and chief executive of HM Land Registry Peter Collis, said: "we have a product that will contribute significantly to electronic conveyancing. The instantaneous retrieval and copying of documents at the press of a button is light years ahead of phoning through requests for documentation and waiting a day or two for the copies to arrive by post."

Under Land Registry Direct, the previous £125 licence fee per PC and an additional annual subscription of £200 is replaced by a one-off charge of £100, reduced to £50 for existing users migrating to the new service. Additional charges, such as the £12 fee to create a user identity, have also been eliminated.

The new service also does away with the need for subscribers to pay for and install emulation software to allow PCs to communicate with the Registry's old "green-screen" mainframe. Instead, all users need to access the service is a Pentium 133 (or higher) PC running Windows 95/98/NT, a 28.8 kbps speed modem (or faster) and an Internet Explorer IE4 or IE5 web browser.

Subscribers can view registers via either the title number or a property address, where the title number is not known. They can also lodge real-time priority official searches and place orders for copies of the register, certificates of inspection, title plans or documents.

BUZZWORD CORNER - AUTHENIZOTIC ORGANISATION
New term, coined by Professor Manfred de Vries of the Insead business school in France, meaning an organisation that aims to give all staff a sense of "really feeling alive and having fun at work". So if you work for a software company that provides free beer on a Friday afternoon or a law firm with its own gymnasium and subsidised canteen, relax they are not doing it because they never want you to go home but because they want you to enjoy your working life. Cynics might prefer to work for cashzotic organisations.
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THE NEW AMERICAN KIDS IN TOWN
In our third and final round-up of suppliers dipping their toes into the UK legal systems market for the first time, we catch up with some of the more promising US entrants.

SSG services include consultancy, systems integration, project management, litigation support and knowledge management work but probably its main attraction to UK firms is that it has distribution rights for the Ringtail CaseBook system. This is an innovative piece of Australian software that combines case and knowledge management functionality within an intranet environment.
www.servicesgroup.com

This allows users remote access to the system so they "check out" and download a document onto their PC, make any changes that are necessary and then check it in again, with Worldox/Web automatically looking after all version control and file management issues. The system, which runs on Microsoft Internet Information Server, offers full security protection both from third parties and to ensure that within a firm no two people simultaneously try to edit the same "master" copy of a document.
www.worldox.com

EPOCH AND RSA TO SUPPLY LEGAL SERVICES
Epoch Software, the developer of Desktop Lawyer, has announced a partnership with FirstAssist, a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal & Sun Alliance, to launch a new subscription-based online legal service. Called LawAssure, it will offer unlimited provision of a range of "intelligent" legal documents, plus access to an online legal guide and legal telephone support services, in conjunction with FirstAssist's legal expenses insurance cover.

LawAssure, which will be marketed directly to the consumer and SME market through affinity groups and similar organisations, will offer subscribers a range of business and personal documents, covering most routine legal services requirements including wills, undefended divorce, confidentiality, employment, tenancy or copyright agreements, partnership deeds, acknowledgement of debt, sale of motor cars and shareholders agreements.

LCD REVISITS CIVIL DOT JUSTICE STRATEGY
The Lord Chancellor's Department has just published a new strategy paper Civil.justice.2000 - a vision of the civil justice system in the information age. This follows on from the original "civil dot justice" consultation exercise the LCD commenced back in September 1998 but what has been achieved in the intervening 21 months? On first appearances the answer would appear to be "not a lot".

The new strategy paper still only addresses the vision thing and, with the exception of the Community Legal Service and its recently opened Just Ask! web portal, all we can look forward to in the near future is the start of a number of pilot projects under the Modernising the Civil Courts Programme (MCC). These include online information kiosks in shopping malls - well at least it will give vandals something new to wreck, and videoconferencing - despite the fact this technology has singularly failed to take off.

Too much space is devoted to the issue of making core legal information freely available to the public by either the long awaited Statute Law Database or initiatives such as BAILII. Fascinating though this topic may be, it has been doing the rounds for the last 20 years. And, in a worrying aside, paragraph 3.44 warns that using IT to create "virtual courts" is "likely to become more difficult" in the short-term because of the "public hearing" requirements of the Human Rights Act 1998, which come into effect in October.

On a positive note, the LCD has recognised that it needs to adopt a more realistic approach as to how it implements and funds any new projects. Taking on board Public Accounts Committee criticism identifying "over ambitious scoping and big bang implementations as key causes of failure," future projects will adopt a "phased, modular and incremental approach". And, we also have a clearer picture of what the civil justice system is trying to achieve. According to the strategy paper - in a comment that is pure Richard Susskind - the law should provide "a fence at the top of the cliff" to stop people falling over "rather than an ambulance at the bottom" to pick up the pieces.

Overall verdict: Nice try, there are some interesting ideas here. Sadly the reader is left feeling this is largely an exercise in political spin to promote the current administration's enthusiasm for "joined up government". The government talks about wanting to make "a real difference" but on this showing there is still no real commitment.

Copies of the strategy paper can be obtained from the LCD's IT Unit (020 7210 8571) as well as on the web.
www.open.gov.uk/lcd
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NEWS IN BRIEF

Meanwhile Pilgrim Systems last week announced that its LawSoft case and practice management software is now also available in an internet/extranet-friendly version that can be accessed via a standard web browser interface.

Yesterday (4th July) also saw the official opening of Axxia's new Sheffield office at the Wentworth Business Park, Tankersley. Michael Napier, the senior partner of Irwin Mitchell, cut the ribbon.

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