Groot nieuws in de Nederlandse markt van aanbieder van juridische IT diensten en software - Epona gaat deel uit maken van de Lexxyn Groep. De samenwerking met dFlow op het gebied van DMS4Legal was misschien al een stille hint dat verdergaande samenwerking wel in het verschiet lag, maar ik had dit persoonlijk niet zien aankomen.

Persbericht volgt:

Epona Software Consultancy, de maker van de CRM applicatie Epona ContactManager, is een strategische samenwerking gestart met de Lexxyn Groep, een samenwerkingsverband waar eerder Clip Consultants, Devoon, dFlow, Helder Telecom, ICT Concept, Light, Scan Service Nederland, SSHNED en Trivium Software al synergie vonden. Epona sluit hiermee per direct aan bij de expertise van de ruim 150 in de juridische markt zeer ervaren medewerkers van Lexxyn.

“Epona werd in de afgelopen twee jaar geconfronteerd met een sterke groei in de vraag naar de juridische CRM toepassing Epona ContactManager en het SharePoint gebaseerde Document Management Systeem Epona DMSforLegal. De sterke groei ook buiten Nederland, zorgde dat onze eigen mensen steeds vaker ook in het buitenland aan projecten werkten, waardoor we in Nederland niet de service konden leveren die klanten van ons verwachten. Door een duurzame samenwerking aan te gaan met de Lexxyn Groep krijgt onze organisatie per direct meer capaciteit en kwaliteit in huis voor het leveren van hoogwaardige juridische IT oplossingen in binnen- én buitenland”, zegt de recentelijk benoemde directeur Marjan Hermkes-van Ham.

Ger Huveneers van de Lexxyn Groep voegt daaraan toe: “We zijn continue op zoek naar de beste software voor de meer dan 1.400 kantoren die met oplossingen van Lexxyn werken. Steeds vaker horen we in de markt dat er behoefte is aan CRM en Business Development software, die goed aansluit bij de manier waarop een advocatenkantoor werkt. Epona ContactManager is een CRM toepassing voor de Top 60 kantoren in Nederland. Wij willen het succes van dit pakket ontsluiten voor de middelgrote en kleinere kantoren. Ik ben zeer enthousiast over de nieuwe partner Epona, die we met onze participatie aan de Lexxyn Groep hebben kunnen toevoegen. Met name de ruime ervaring die de consultants hebben bij grote advocatenkantoren in combinatie met de sterke softwareproducten van het bedrijf zijn een waardevolle aanvulling voor Lexxyn."

Epona is een in Rotterdam, Frankfurt en New York gevestigd software en consultancy bedrijf. Epona bestaat sinds 1993 en heeft in de groep 59 medewerkers in dienst. In de advocatuur en bij afdelingen juridische en fiscale zaken staat Epona vooral bekend om de producten Epona ContactManager, Epona DMSforLegal en Epona Studieplanner. De combinatie van onze ervaring in de juridische sector van meer dan 15 jaar en onze up-to-date kennis van technologie, aangevuld met een persoonlijke benadering, maakt Epona een waardevolle partner om mee te werken. Bezoek voor meer informatie over Epona onze website www.epona.com.

De Lexxyn Groep bestaat uit bedrijven gespecialiseerd in ICT-dienstverlening voor de juridische markt: de advocatuur, het notariaat en de deurwaarderspraktijk. Zij leveren procesondersteunende ICT-diensten, zoals kantoorautomatisering, cloud computing, webdiensten, telecommunicatie en speciaal voor advocaten, notarissen en deurwaarders ontwikkelde enterprise software. De grote gebundelde ervaring van de deelnemers maakt de Lexxyn Groep tot een interessante partner van kleine, middelgrote én grote ondernemingen in de juridische sector. Bij Lexxyn vinden zij één aanspreekpunt voor alle benodigde ICT-diensten. Bezoek voor meer informatie over Lexxyn onze website www.lexxyn.nl.

Na succesvolle jaren van groei, waarbij diverse industry awards gewonnen zijn en de wereldwijde interesse in voice productivity (zoals Siri) extreem toegenomen zijn, heeft BigHand een grote investeerder aangetrokken; Bridgepoint Development Capital (‘BDC’). Deze deal geeft BigHand de mogelijkheid om nog verder te investeren in het innoveren van spraaktechnologie en haar customer service. Meer informatie hierover en de positieve gevolgen vindt u op de website van BigHand.

Lees het Engelstalige persbericht.

One of the more innovative features of the iPhone 4 is the ability to make 'video calls' through a technology that Apple called Facetime. Facetime is not a groundbreaking, new technology - video calling has been around in different forms for many years already. What is groundbreaking or innovative about it, is that Apple decided the time is right for video calling and that they believe this option should be a standard, easily-accessible, feature on your phone.

Setting up a Facetime call on the iPhone 4 is almost as easy as making a phone call. No need anymore to try and explain to your parents or grandparents what Skype is, how they can install it, and how to use it. All you need is to make sure that you give them an iPhone - for Christmas or something - and it suddenly becomes a lot easier to show them how your newborn son is growing. Not everyone can live within short travel distance of their relatives anymore.

At the moment, you do need WiFi for Facetime calls. With the reliability of mobile datanetworks (e.g. 3G) being rather poor, having a WiFi connection is probably for the better anyway. Having WiFi at your home should not be too much of a problem. If you are able to afford an iPhone 4, you should be able to afford a WiFi setup as well.

Business usage

I do not see Facetime one-on-one video calls becoming very popular among business users. The lack of availability of Facetime devices (limited to the iPhone 4 and the newest iPod Touch at the moment) in businesses is one reason for this. However, the added value of doing a video call with your colleagues or customers is low - unless you need to show something in real time. Also, you both need access to WiFi at the moment of the call, which would be a limitation - for the moment - as well.

iPad revolution

The adaption of another iOS device, might be changing the playing field rapidly. It is amazing how the iPad is accepted by so many new, previously non-Apple, users. What is more amazing, is that it seems a lot of those new users are relatively older people. Those new users seem to embrace the iPad as a new wonder-tool. Finally a device which they can understand and is very comfortable to read email and documents (mostly attachments) on. My prediction is that you will see the iPad (or similar devices) having a 30-50% ownership rate among senior business workers.

Most iPads are still purchased for private usage, yet the owners then start bringing them to work too. Demand for iPad support from their business (IT support) will therefore grow and the same goes for dedicated iPad business Apps. Of course, it will only be a matter of time before businesses will start buying iPads (or similar devices) for their employees.

Facetime on the iPad

In the meantime, Apple will be updating the device (mostly likely it will follow a similar yearly update cycle as the iPhone) and one of the expected additions will be a front-facing camera. That would bring Facetime to the iPad. Video calling will benefit from the large iPad screen but where it will probably make the most of a difference is videocalling with multiple people, i.e. videoconferencing.

There are many - sometimes very impressive - videoconferencing solutions available. They are also all relatively costly. If you want high-quality videoconferencing, expect to pay at least 10k per meeting room (not taking monthly costs into account) - though for the really high-end solutions, prices can sky-rocket a lot higher (I prefer this one myself). The problem is then that you are still dependent on a meeting room.

How does the iPad come into this picture? If Apple can create an easy interface on the iPad to videoconference with other iPad users (through Facetime), that would finally give business users an easy-to-use, affordable solution to do videoconferences. All on a device that the owners would want for multiple other reasons as well.

How would this work? An iPad user would sit in her own office, with WiFi available, preferably having an iPad dock or standard to hold the device in the right position. Someone would set up a Facetime conference (perhaps a central emailaddress can be set for this purpose where everyone could 'connect' to) and everyone would join in from their own iPad. There would be some obstacles that need to be overcome of course. What would you for example do with people who still want to sit in one room with other conference attendees? That would prove a challenge as multiple devices will we outputting and receiving audio in the same room. I am however fairly certain that obstacles like these will be overcome. iPad videoconference, in one form or another, will be coming to your office in the future.

* The above image is a mock-up of what an iPad videoconference might look like. I do hope it will look a bit better than my mock-up. Also, I do not think people often smile/laugh like that in business meetings.

Whether you are a small or large law firm, your business will mostly be based on documents. Legal documents, correspondence, and also a lot of administrative stuff (think invoices and such). Being a lawyer has always meant that you find yourself surrounded by a lot of paper.

Paper is everywhere

Even though modern IT solutions might have allowed you to use less paper for years now, through for example your document management system or high-tech scanning solution, there is a large chance that the amount of paper around you, is still the same. This might be due to several reasons:

• the amount of documents and e-mail correspondence has grown significantly so that even though a lot less is printed on paper, in the end the piles of paper have not diminished;
• you or your fellow lawyers have a hard time completely trusting the 'digital' copy of your files and feel more secure (consciously or subconsciously) knowing that there is a paper version of the entire case in your cabinet (or the company archives);
• there is this belief within your firm that having a physical copy of a document (or e-mail) gives it more legal validity (i.e. it could more easily be used as 'legal proof'). This belief is based on false assumptions but can be hard to get rid of;
• you like to read everything from paper and have a hard time throwing anything away;
• you refuse to use the computer and have your secretary print every single e-mail or have the intern print everything they can find through Legal Intelligence (or any other know-how database) on a certain subject for a current matter;
• you love the smell of paper and having a room full of bulging matter files makes you feel alive. Plus you love having your clients visit you and impress them with the amount of information you gather on their case.

Some very good reasons to get rid of paper

From the perspective of the modern firm manager, paper is a costly thorn in the eye. From my perspective, as a minimalist and environmentally conscious person, paper is quite evil. Paper is simply a big waste of resources:

• costly to purchase (and costly to print on). The cost of the printers, including all the resources they use (power, IT support, maintenance, etc.), also has to be taken into account;
• costly to store. Think of all the warehouses full of paper archives that we accumulated over the past decades. First, your paper files will probably live inside your office for a while. I have seen plenty of lawyers who can not find certain matter files on a daily basis with it either being lost in the piles somewhere, misplaced by a secretary, given (and forgotten that it was) to a junior lawyer for further study, etc. After a while, the file may be stored in a cabinet and eventually be send of to an external archive just in case it will be needed again in the future;
• costly to handle. Searching for that one document in a huge binder or tracking down that certain invoice in a pile of similar looking invoices. Having to arrange different storage for the files as they get older and older or arranging for them to be destroyed. These are just a few example of the 'handling' cost of paper;
• a huge waste of our earthly resources.

So not only does paper involve a large share of material resources, there is also a lot of time involved with the handling of paper (printing, finding, sorting, archiving). The elimination of paper is probably one of the largest reasons a modern lawyer can do without secretarial support much easier.

Start eliminating paper, now!

Is it hard to eliminate paper? No, not at all. You do not even have to eliminate all paper. If you enjoy reading certain things from paper - like that final due diligence report that you are going over one more time - than you can still print it, of course. The time that we all have access to excellent e-readers that can truly replace paper, is still somewhere in the future.
What I am advocating is that you do not try and keep the paper in your office anymore. So after reading that final version of the document, you can throw it away (recycle bin).

Scanners that turn paper into digital files are usually ubiquitous in offices nowadays. Software for archiving your files are available in many forms. You can choose to have your digital files made "searchable" by making the text readable by your computer systems. This technology is often referred to as OCR (Optical Character Recognition) as a computer needs to recognize the letters of a text as separate characters.
Also keep in mind that it is important to store your files in an accepted "archiving" format. File formats (like Microsoft Word format or Adobe PDF) tend to change every few years and are not supported indefinitely. To avoid any problems, go with PDF/A.

Keep it simple (with going paperless)

My approach to the paperless office is to start of simple. One of the parts of your office that lends itself for going paperless first, is your incoming invoices. Invoices are usually entered into an accounting system and then stored away in binders. Legally you can just as well throw the paper version of the invoice away, and only keep a digital copy. Simply scan all incoming invoices and then throw them away. Store the invoices with the help from your accounting software or archiving software. Alternatively you can create your own system of storing the files (somewhere on your company file system). You could use Dropbox as a secure backup solution (and at the same time having access to these files from anywhere).

Two other solutions for easy-and-quick scanning and archiving that are especially useful for smaller firms (but could also be leveraged by larger firms):

• use an iPhone or other smartphone (e.g. Android phones) to 'scan' the invoices and receipts by taking a picture of it. There are special scanning 'apps' to assist you with this, e.g. Scanner Pro for iPhone.
• use an archiving/notes utility. There are specialized apps and services for invoices (Shoeboxed, JustTheBill) and there are more general apps for archiving everything (Evernote). I prefer the latter and use Evernote myself. Every invoice or receipt will be scanned (with a scanner or with my iPhone (through Evernote)) and synced with Evernote. That means that I can always access my archived invoices through my computer, iPhone, iPad or the Internet.

Now that more and more companies are sending digital invoices it also helps that these can be easily combined with your scanned archive.

There we have it, our first steps into going paperless. If you have any questions in finding the right solutions to help your firm become 'paperless', please do not hesitate to contact me or my company (Legalsense).

Legal IT Professionals published an interesting ten-minute interview with Jack Newton, President of Clio. Clio is web-based practice management system mostly targeted at small law firms. Jack has some interesting things to say about 'Software as a Service' (SaaS), the future of mobile devices and his own company/product. Worth listening to at Ten minutes with Jack Newton (Clio).