On-line dealing grows

Titmuss Sainer Dechert offers electronic 'deal room'

City law firm Titmuss Sainer Dechert - which last week announced its merger with a US firm - has become the latest practice to launch a virtual 'deal room', enabling clients and lawyers to communicate and work together on documents in a secure on-line environment.Titmuss is following the lead in extranet facilities set by larger firms such as Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy, which launched their own home-grown versions earlier this year.Doc-Share was customised for the firm by US-based InterNetEx, from a system already in use at US law firms.

It enables 24-hour, seven-day access to transaction documents from anywhere in the world.

The system enables documents to be shared on-line - each user has a personal 'virtual filing cabinet' - and allows interaction between clients and their legal teams throughout the development of transaction documents and contracts.Doc-Share will be available to all of the combined firm's clients.InterNetEx is the firm's application service provider (ASP), running the application from its own server in the US.

Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy's, by contrast, developed and run their systems in-house.

The Doc-Share system, according to InterNetEx's London representative Sarah Davey, provides 'better security'.Titmuss's IT director, John Rowland, emphasised his firm's security requirements as the most important factor in choosing InterNetEx as an ASP.

Using an ASP also freed up the time and resources that would have been necessary to develop an in-house system, he said, although Doc-Share was tailored to the firm's needs.

Rowland Byass