For all their sophistication and grasp of the legal market-place, sometimes the big software houses miss a golden opportunity.

Martin Halliday, a canny Newcastle solicitor, saw just such an opening and dived head first into it.

After investigating criminal costs packages that might assist him in his work as a criminal practitioner in the courts of the north east, Mr Halliday, of Halliday Reeves in Gateshead, decided that he could do better.

'We found that commercial software was going to cost over £11,000.

We thought: "There has to be a way of doing it cheaper,"' he said.Using the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet package, Mr Halliday began to put a costs system together modelled on the DSPS 1 forms used by the country's 5700 duty solicitors.Next, he worked on forms used in the magistrates' courts and then the Crown Courts.

'I realised that I couldn't go wrong if I tried to duplicate the courts' own procedures and forms.

After tweaking it a bit, I approached the Legal Aid Board and they approved of it.

Then I consulted the Teesside Crown Court in Middlesborough,' he said.The programme worked so successfully that Mr Halliday decided to market it.

He formed a company, Crimetime Ltd.

Forms generated by Crimetime software have been accepted by the LAB's area 8 and by the Crown Courts at Teesside, Newcastle and Durham.The application comes in the form of three stand-alone packages, covering DSPS 1, green form and magistrates' courts, and the Crown Court.The DSPS 1 package is a calculator that deals with the three situations where attendance at a police station is required: own solicitor, duty solicitor, and own and duty solicitor.

Each section is compiled in the same way as the form and a question in the contents page determines whether the firm is franchised.

Present legal aid rates are applied, although a version that takes into account the last rates will be available shortly.The green form and magistrates' courts bills package share a common 'info sheet' and each bill is then served separately by its own 'time sheet'.

The green form time sheets show the cumulative total of fees and disbursements and, if the limits are exceeded, Crimetime will make the necessary computations for the relevant forms.

The magistrates' courts package calculates, produces and prints out CRIM 13, 14 and 15 forms and the central fund bills.The Crown Court package is slightly different.

It has no contents page because every sheet can be accessed from a combined 'info/time sheet' and all the information is entered onto a single sheet.Crimetime's publicity material states 'same day billing a reality; improved cash flow; more fee-earning time; and no arithmetical error rejects', so, at an introductory price of £499 plus VAT, criminal practitioners could be onto a good thing.Contact Crimetime Ltd on 0191 477 7728, fax 0191 477 9109.