Legal Tech New York

Big Sizzle at the N.Y. Hilton: Is the Tech Recession Over?

WHAT incredible energy at the LegalTech New York meeting last month at the N.Y. Hilton!

The halls were jammed, seminars were packed (standing room only for the keynote address by Thomas O'Neil III of MCI), parties were humming, and vendors grew hoarse by the end of the three-day extravaganza.

Here are just a few of the new products and services that debuted at LTNY!

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Attendees jam the Cisco Systems Inc. booth, to the delight of Bruce Carrier, right.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

Professional Cost Recovery System 4.0

EQUITRAC Corp., of Coral Gables, Fla., announced the Spring release of its Professional Cost Recovery System 4, a wide area network tool that centralizes the accounting and monitoring of document expenses, while allowing for connectivity to decentralized and remote document output devices. System 4 manages multi-validated account and transaction data from desktop and network printers, telephones, photocopiers, faxes and other disbursements.

Reader Response no. 221.

COURT DOCKET

Lexis & CourtLink

The latest iteration of CourtLink was unveiled at the New York sessions. Bellevue, Wash.'s CourtLink Inc. was recently purchased by LexisNexis Group.

The revamped company is now called LexisNexis CourtLink Inc.

It continues to provide Web-based services for electronically filing legal documents and accessing and monitoring court records.

LexisNexis CourtLink has already begun the process of integrating the CourtLink eAccess and CourtLink eFile services with the LexisNexis suite of research, information and integrated practice management and portal technology services for the legal industry, it says.

Reader Response no. 222.

Goodbye, LawPack

The bidding's on as vendors try to woo firms that have been using Hummingbird Ltd.'s LawPack software, now that Hummingbird has announced it is discontinuing the product.

Los Angeles' Mitratech and Houston-based DataCert are among the companies anxious to get firms to switch allegiances.

The two companies are offering a "joint upgrade." Mitratech says it is offering its TeamConnect Enterprise software free of charge for a limited time to all existing LawPack customers. For each existing LawPack license, it will offer TeamConnect Enterprise Server and user licenses.

John Walchle of Hewlett-Packard, on the show floor.

DataCert says it will provide a free first year of the ShareDoc/LEGAL e-billing service, provided that firms commit least 50 of its offices and executes a two-year contract. It will also offer other discounts, it says.

Reader Response no. 223.

WEB SERVICES

West Targets Solos

Eagan Minn.-based West Group has announced that West customers at single-attorney offices and small firms can now view account information on westgroup.com, the company's corporate Web site. Customers can log on and securely view current balances, make payments, check the status of previous payments and update their addresses. The new service also lets users check the status of orders, track shipments, monitor the status of returns, and request re-shipments.

Reader Response no. 224.

NETWORKING & STORAGE

Addonics Drive

Addonics Technologies Inc., of Fremont, Calif., introduced its Pocket DVD/CDRW drive. It features an 8x DVD player, an 8x CDRW burner and a 24x CD-ROM drive, in a 5.62 x 5.31 x .87-inch enclosure weighing 14 ounces. The drive has a data transfer rate of 3600 KB-per-second (24x CD) and 10,600 KBps (DVD 8x).

Addonics bundles the USB, FireWire and CardBus compatible drive with CD mastering software, and MPEG-2 decoding software for DVD movie playback.

The drive can record and read in five CDRW recording formats: track at once, multisession, disc at once, session at once, and packet writing. It is compatible with DVD, CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, CD-I, CD-DA, CD-Bridge, CD-Extra, and Video CD media.

Reader Response no. 225.

PRACTICE TOOLS

CaseMap-Summation

Molly George, of LegalVoice, at the Super Bowl party.

DecisionQuest, of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., has introduced the CaseMap-Summation Linker. It helps users connect information in CaseMap to text and images stored in Summation LG.

Reader Response no. 226.

LITIGATION SUPPORT

LitigationAdvisor

El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences Corp. showed off its LitigationAdvisor, an automated bill review, case management and planning tool. It manages legal expenses and the litigation process for corporate counsel, insurance carriers, third-party administrators and government agencies, and incorporates traditional legal data with real-time communications to streamlines business operations. It is available in turnkey, browser-based application, and hosted browser-based application installations.

Reader Response no. 227.

UTILITIES

Out-of-Sight

Staten Island, N.Y.'s SoftWise Consulting Services Inc. released its Out-of-Sight metadata management utility. It helps firms reduce risks and avoid potential embarrassments by managing the metadata in electronically distributed documents so that private information is not unintentionally disclosed.

Firms can identify metadata components within their documents, generate detailed reports on that metadata, and "clean" documents before sending them.

Reader Response no. 228.