Welcome back to our new ‘Horizon’ newsletter
As we moved through our year end at the end of August we fastened our seatbelts and readied ourselves for what was set to be a very busy period for our engineering, development and implementation teams – ahead of the arrival of 4 new clients into our hosted fold a further four additional hardware nodes were seamlessly integrated into our ever expanding Hyper-Converged hardware platform in our primary Data Centre environment. I’m very pleased to say, as we rapidly approach what is to be the second anniversary of its launch that its performance has exceeded even my own lofty expectations, especially on the reliability front – where we can boast only the most minor blips having been experienced, resulting in 99.999% availability since implementation. Now more than double its original size and capacity, our commitment to expanding around this hardware technology and resulting uptime remains steadfast, where I commend the inordinate efforts of our core engineering teams for reaching this high bar.
It’s fair to say, that from time to time the unexpected does happen and since our last edition we were subjected to the impact of an unwelcome ‘comms outage’ with one of our upstream providers. From what was the rather serious failure of a pair of high end routers affecting thousands of end points, a full recovery was made in less than 3 hours. As unusual and rare as this type of failure may be, and such that we learn and improve from this experience, work is underway to find a solution to help us more readily bypass upstream providers dealing with this type of incident and we will of course keep you appraised of our progress on this.
I wouldn’t want to let this issue pass by without giving a very warm ‘welcome on-board’ to our four new clients, Hedges Law LTD, Emery Johnson Astills LTD, Bright and Sons Solicitors and Prince Evans Solicitors LLP. Over the months ahead I look forward to seeing our working relationships strengthen and IT usage advance.
Elsewhere across the business I report that high levels of industriousness continue with further exciting advancements being made across the board. Now well and truly in winter mode, I leave you to review some of those areas in this month’s feature rich edition of Horizon.
Dates for the diary:
LSN’s London winter networking event –18th November 2019
Tikit P4W National User Group- 21st November 2019- BT Centre, 81 Newgate Street, London
Law Society Annual Competition Section dinner and awards – 21st November- The Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1PL
LSN The Agile Firm- 25th November- 25 Walbrook, London, EC4N 8AF
Legal Futures Innovation Conference- 28th November 2019- Cavendish Conference Centre, London
Law Society Women in law centenary- 28th November- The Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1PL
LAPG Dinner and Conference
As proud sponsors of the Annual Legal Aid Conference 2019 we would like to congratulate them on another successful gathering this year in Birmingham. The first night started off with a lovely dinner that allowed attendees to not only enjoy a well-deserved break but also raise money through a raffle, with great prizes such as champagne, football tickets and one of the more unusual prizes, a slice of toast!
With a broad range of workshops, events and speeches from some of the hard working people in the LAPG, the conference not only inspired those who attended, it also shed light on some of the important issues in the legal aid sector.
And the winner is…
It’s always a pleasure to attend and be a headline sponsor for the LSN networking events, it’s a great way to unwind and meet your fellow like-minded peers in the legal industry!
We saw such a fantastic response to our prize draw and we’re very pleased to announce that the winner of our Echo Show was Will Lumb, we hope you enjoy it!
Client Work
Glover Priest
Glover Priest have a long standing history of providing excellent legal protection for their clients, with their oldest office in Tamworth being traced back to 1749. Since then the firm has seen great growth, as they now have eight offices operating in Birmingham, Staffordshire and Northampton. The firm pride themselves on continuously supporting the legal needs of local communities and constantly living up to their company values of being experienced, expert and personable.
Glover Priest has been using P4W for nearly two years and the Accesspoint Legal Service development team helped them initially write their Sale and Purchase case flows. Recently, the case flows have been overhauled and they and the development team have been working with a third party consultant to fully integrate with Perfect Portal and Infotrack.
This has included the creation of managing partner tables and XAML screens which populate the figures directly from Perfect Portal and then output this information directly into Infotrack. The auto population of completion statements and bills has also proved to be beneficial.
Aldridge Brownlee
Aldridge Brownlee was founded in 1929 and over the years they have seen steady growth with three offices located in Bournemouth and one in Highcliffe. Altogether the firm employs over 70 people across the team, specialising in personal law – disputes & litigation, family law and business law.
Aldridge Brownlee were looking for someone to help code their many templates in their run up to going live with Tikit as they realised that they did not have the capacity in house for this.
Once Accesspoint Legal Service engaged with Aldridge Brownlee, we primarily assisted the firm with adding and coding case management templates into P4W in readiness for their go live in April this year. We have also continued to support them through our onsite maintenance, they undertook the training for Case Manager and Desktop for over 50 users.
Now Aldridge Brownlee have also made use of Accesspoint Legal Service’s offering of their pre-coded Oyez Forms for all departments.
New Products!
Update – Flashpoint has generated a lot of interest since its launch, with several early adopters integrating the flashpoint gateway software with their PMS. Needless to say, they have seen a dramatic improvement – cutting down their admin time and the speed of filing confidential notes whilst on the move!
We are now pleased to announce Flashpad. Flashpad is an eco-friendly and innovative approach to note taking with the added benefit of white labelling. We can now provide you with branded notepads for those all-important meetings and appointments and they integrate fully with the Flashpoint gateway to enable high speed filing of your all-important client notes etc straight into your PMS chosen folders or client case files.
Flashpad allows you to send notes on the move and will save you days of admin time, plus they can be re-used again and again with the added benefit of write on wipe off ‘traditional’ hand movement technology. Simply write your notes, scan, erase and then re-use.
Cut your costs and choose the environmentally friendly Flashpad!
Sale & Purchase Screens – Our latest addition to the growing portfolio
AVAILABLE NOW
FormShare enables firms to use Adobe PDF Forms as an efficient method of electronically capturing data.
The Sales & Purchase screens have been seamlessly integrated with Perfect Portal. When matters are created in P4W the information from Perfect Portal is stored within these screens, this is then available to auto populate templates and either Oyez or Laser Forms. The sale and purchase screens have also been designed to work when using Infotrack so that the information is available to auto populate their forms as well.
Main Features
– Quickly populates your forms and templates
– Accurate data given each time
– Reduces wasted time spent on admin work
Meet our new Junior Developer
Joni Hasimvllari
Junior Developer
A very recent addition to the development team, initially Joni has spent his first couple of weeks adapting to the technologies used by clients and then also getting to grips with how the Accesspoint development team operate.
Having an educational background in computing, Joni joined the team with a range of valuable skills and experience, both in front and back-end languages such as C#, SQL and JavaScript to name but a few.
What’s new?
Ground breaking developments – Using your website to enable more efficiencies for your firm
The vision for the use of more joined up IT within legal is now a major talking point across a good number of Law firms and we are now starting to see ‘on the ground’ how this can be implemented to best effect. Your website has the potential to be an untapped vault of yet to be found wealth.
All too often law firms have committed themselves to big expenditure on technology, websites and marketing which is often vastly underutilised or sometimes even understood, yet has the capability of delivering a lot more when managed and used correctly. A firm’s website no longer acts as merely a shop window but has the capability to ‘pull’ a more intelligent and efficient way of working by integrating software ‘automation’ and linking it directly with a firm’s PMS.
Like everything related to IT you must first consider and identify what outcome is required.
Firstly, understand and adopt the power IT has to offer in accelerating your ability to overcome daily challenges and then the importance of getting it right for your ever-changing environment and increasingly demanding colleagues and clients alike.
Web forms are a particularly data rich environment as we know and could alleviate many hours if not days of admin resource when integrated fully firm wide.
We have now developed software which allows your firm to seamlessly join your website to your PMS.
This offers you the ability to automatically inject the data from your website enquiry forms and create a prospective client directly within your PMS providing you with a seamless high speed link between prospects, clients and solicitors. Thus bridging the gap of miscommunication and wasted admin time.
With every enquiry form that is sent to your firm, you can track and analyse the data from it. The Web form creates a prospective client plus the follow up automated action for the client intake process. The reports produced can track conversion rates from prospect to live client and how much revenue has been generated from your web forms.
Bespoke web forms can be created that allow you to add relevant data fields then identify the most suitable recipient to receive the enquiry and respond accordingly through automated emails.
Once the forms have been completed an acknowledgement email can automatically be sent to the prospect within seconds. As well as a notification sent straight into the designated solicitors inbox regarding the enquiry – the whole issue being dealt with in a matter of seconds.
A series of follow up alerts can then be triggered to ensure that no enquiry will be missed. The whole process tailored to your firm’s internal procedures and GDPR requirements.
The future of utilising your website is very bright, making websites work harder for us and becoming more efficient whilst improving workflows for the firm and more importantly also saving money!
“It was a great pleasure to attend the Alternative Legal Management Conference on 30th September and 1st November at the De Vere Hotel in Windsor. This conference was aimed at Managing Partners and CEO’s in the Legal Mid-Market. It was a well organised conference with a good turnout. On Day 2 it merged with the Alternative Legal IT Management Conference aimed at Heads of IT in the Legal Mid-market. We spoke to many delegates and walked away with a number of good leads who plan to look for new hosting providers and embark on new PMS projects. We are excited to see how next year’s conference will plan out and see who will be attending!”
– Hong Tran, Sales Manager
Meet our new media specialist
Arminta Butrimaite
Creative Designer
I have always had a creative passion for design, having completed small projects for friends and family as well as for Accesspoint. I am very fortunate to be given the opportunity to work in this capacity and improve my skills in this field as a creative designer for Accesspoint Media Services. My role here will be to provide creative visual concepts for our clients, such as memorable branding projects, including the design and development of logos plus offline printed collateral including brochures and point of sale etc. In addition I will be required to provide creative work for website mock-ups, e-shot campaigns and social media graphics.
What’s new?
NEW STARTER
Connor Margetts
Trainee Support Technician
Connor joined Accesspoint in July 2019 as an apprentice. He has just started his course and is working hard to develop his skills learnt from it to help provide a better service. Connor has already proven to be a valued member to the company, we are excited to see how Connor progresses in his role and will continue to guide him through the process.
Breaking down what artificial intelligence means for SMEs
Q) What is so important about artificial intelligence?
A) Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to be the next major influencer in legal IT, bringing with it a differentiating factor for the competitive edge. Turn the clock back a few years and the concept of cloud technology was possibly just as daunting or – to some – exciting, carrying the prospect of risk and uncertainty. Firms were talking about it, but very few were willing to stick their toe in the water and trust the technology enough to make use of it. In a very short space of time, it became clear that the firms who were willing to embrace cloud technology surpassed all of their sceptical competitors. Unlike cloud technology, however, the practical impact of utilising AI will have even more exponential benefits to those firms willing to apply it correctly.
Q) Is there any proof that AI can help in practical terms?
A) The recent findings from the LPM LITL 2018 survey highlight that AI has become the hottest topic for discussions within the SME sector. What was surprising, however, was that only 73% of the SME market had a good understanding of the practical implications of AI for the market. Embraced and adopted in the United States, AI has already proved its worth within the legal sector, both expediting and streamlining business functions such as document review and legal research, assistance with due diligence, contract review management and automated divorce applications to mention but a few. Those sceptics among us still contemplating the practical implications need only look at the recent LawGeex landmark study, which pitted 20 experienced, trained lawyers against an AI algorithm to determine various comprising factors. The outcome was simply astonishing. During everyday contract management, the AI system achieved an accuracy of 94% when compared to an average of 85% across the 20 lawyers. What really set the bar was the time taken for the AI algorithm to complete the function in only 26 seconds compared to the average 92 minutes averaged across all the lawyers.
Q) How do you think AI will impact the legal profession?
A) If we’re to believe industry insights from Deloitte, 100,000 legal roles will be automated by 2036. It reports that, by 2020, law firms will be faced with a ‘tipping point’ for their new talent strategy. As frightening as that may seem, now is the time for all law firms to commit and embrace AI and all the functions it has to offer. AI may not spell the end of the legal market as we know it, but, like cloud technology, it will set those who use it apart from the rest, surpassing the ‘purer’ market drive and commercial viability. For example, the team at Accesspoint have embraced AI and are actively working on various technologies to introduce them to the UK legal market, from the business functions mentioned above to improving the financial reporting applications that are currently available, making it a practical, three-dimensional data flow that will drive law firms forward over the next five to 10 years.
