Butterworths signs up EveryformFREE FORMS: company purchases site to gain better access to high street firmsLegal publishing giant Butterworths Tolley has made a major move in its effort to beef up its on-line services by buying Everyform the highly successful...Legal publishing giant Butterworths Tolley has made a major move in its effort to beef up its on-line services by buying Everyform the highly successful Web site which gives away free digital forms.Founded 18 months ago, Everyform has 12,200 registered users, including 39% of UK law firms.

The site provides around 1,000 court forms free of charge and has proved popular with small and medium-sized practices.Everyform will remain free to users but its purchase will make the forms and its Hot Docs software available through Butterworths information portal, Law Direct, which is also free.Everyforms founder, Russell Shepherd, said that while the company had been a spectacular success, it has been necessary to sell to acquire legal content and raise capital.Butterworths Tolley executive director Sarah Thomas said the company had purchased the site to gain better access to high-street firms.

HIgh-street firms are the slowest sector to take up using the Web and this is a way for them to get good free content, which is compelling enough for them to use and to lead them to use our other services, she explained.Meanwhile, Butterworths Tolley has teamed up with legal training company Semple Piggot Rochez to launch what it claims is the first on-line legal TV news service.The CPD Direct digital television news service will include interviews with leading figures in the legal news, combined with associated articles and a discussion forum.The service uses streaming media player RealPlayer (users can obtain RealPlayer 8 Basic free of charge from www.real.com) and can be viewed reasonably well using a 56k modem, although the best results will be achieved via ISDN, ADSL or leased lines.Mike Semple Piggot, chief executive of Semple Piggot Rochez, said: Even though it will still be some time before broadband technologies develop sufficiently to enable high-definition television services to be delivered on the Web...

excellent use can be made of current narrowband access.Sue Allen