The Legal IT Exhibition, the UK's largest legal technology event, took place last week at the Business Design Centre in north London. Compared with previous exhibitions, this was one of the busiest events for some years, not least because 2005 is the year a lot of law firms will be replacing the now ageing IT infrastructures they installed in the late-1990s in preparation for Y2K.

Although there were some technology 'newbies' present, including one ten- lawyer firm that was shopping around to buy its first computerised accounts system and office automation network, as well as a sizeable contingent of in-house lawyers looking for systems to help them manage their relations with the firms they instruct, most visitors were from private practice with an interest in where technology would be taking them next.


There was no shortage of suggestions. For example, in one of the keynote conference sessions on accounts and practice management software, Martin Siddle, the sales director of Pracctice revealed that his company - which already provides its Osprey TM system on a hosted basis (which means instead of having their own servers, firms dial in to central servers over an Internet link) - was now planning to provide its software on a pay-as-you-go basis. His view was that as solicitors were already familiar with this approach with services such as electricity, LexisNexis, and mobile telephones, why should legal software be any different? Pracctice will be launching this service later this spring.


Charles Christian: case management systems provide 'glue' to work

Another point of view - expressed both in the keynote sessions and by salesmen on suppliers' stands - was that case management software is now evolving from being a primarily document production and management system and becoming instead a legal process management system.

Neil Ewin, chairman of case management systems provider Visualfiles, said it had always been difficult to get solicitors to admit that 'lawyering' could be broken down into a series of discrete processes but felt that the growth of compliance issues - such as running anti-money laundering checks - had convinced many firms that automating at least some of their processes was now the way ahead. Mr Ewin, whose own company launched its M2 matter and e-mail management system at the event, said firms were now recognising that case and workflow management software could provide the 'glue' that pull all the different aspects of legal work together, not least by freeing solicitors from some of the routine but essential chores associated with client and matter management.


However, the most striking feature of the exhibition was its increasingly technology-savvy audience. For example, in the case management keynote session, several of the speakers were talking about e-conveyancing issues, such as Pisces and the XML data exchange standard. I was chairing the session and asked the audience how many were familiar with the terms 'Pisces' and 'XML'. Of the 150 people present, about 90% raised their hands, whereas a year ago you would have been lucky to find anyone who had heard of them.


Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society's Software Solutions guide