Epoch revitalised by US success

Downloadable documents: software company sets sights on the UK once again

Legal IT software company Epoch, which was last year saved from liquidation, has bounced back to business by recently completing three high-value deals in the US.The company, which is behind the on-line service Desktop Lawyer, suffered from last year's dot-com crash and after failing to receive vital second-round funding from investors was saved from liquidation by a management buy-out (see [2001] Gazette, 13 September, 5).The first project, carried out for the American Association of Retired People (AARP), was to provide an on-line legal service to complement the organisation's walk-in legal clinics in the Washington DC area.

The service, which is available at www.elderlawdc.com and is accessible by legal advisers and clients, gives advice on a number of legal topics and allows users to download Epoch's Rapidocs legal documents.The second project was for the Maryland legal aid network at www.mdjustice.net, creating an on-line downloadable document portal and a legal guide to help the user through the process.The final project was for specialist professional indemnity insurer Profin, developing an automated proposal form which can be accessed via a secure Web site by Profin's 4,000 brokers nationwide.

The brokers access a Rapidocs 'intelligent' template which asks them relevant questions, collects the appropriate data and then calculates the appropriate premium, producing a personalised proposal form.Solicitor Richard Cohen, co-owner of Epoch, said: 'These deals show how wrong the investors were when they decided not to award us more capital last year - we have always had a strong client base and the fact that we have been around since 1996 shows that we are long-term players.'He added that although the company's services are currently being better received in the US than in this country, they had not given up hope of the UK taking the company's idea of downloadable legal documents to its heart.'The AARP and Maryland projects were both for non-profit making groups,' he said.

'We are hoping to show the results of the schemes to UK organisations such as the Legal Services Commission and Citizen's Advice Bureaux, and show how the technologies developed can bring them huge returns on their initial investments.'Victoria MacCallum