Computing: 15 companies included in the Law Society's latest guide to the best practice and case management software

MSS has come out top once again in the Law Society's Software Solutions guide, only this time under a new name - AlphaLAW.


The top four firms remained the same as last year - after AlphaLAW, they were Eclipse, Edgebyte and Linetime - while most suppliers enjoyed increases in customer satisfaction in both the company and product areas.


Access entered the 15-strong guide for the first time, while DPS rejoined after a break.


The concentration on levels of satisfaction might be a reflection of what has been, by most accounts, a tough year for vendors, but whatever the reasons for this, it is good news for customers.


Robin ap Cynan, Law Society Council member and chairman of the guide's panel, said: 'The people who are doing well are the ones who want to look after their customers. We seem to have a divide between those suppliers who deliver their product fully configured for their customers, having done all the thinking for them, and those who have a fabulous flexible product, which is effectively unusable 'out of the box', without spending money fitting the product to the firm.'


The firm with the biggest movement in the charts was TFB, which made an impressive jump in its customer satisfaction rating on last year.


Simon Hill, the company's managing director, said: 'We were delighted to have come first in the overall customer satisfaction index, especially in a year when overall standards have also risen.'


The company has been out buying up other vendors, and said its success has been in large part due to 'the levels of customer satisfaction for the profession that such growth can bring'.


Mr Hill echoed Mr ap Cynan's view that customer tailoring and relationships are potentially more important at the moment than the systems in use. 'There has been a lot of hype surrounding technologies such as [Microsoft's] .Net and some of that is justified,' he explained. 'However, most law firms are now realising they need to get more out of what they've actually got, and probably the most significant challenge is actually training and selecting the right staff to implement and use it.'


Several trends emerged in pulling together the guide this year, of which training, or the lack of it, stood out. In the market research, firms often said they were not as happy with their vendors' training as they were with other elements of service, but vendors said that training was often not being taken up.


Mr ap Cynan agreed that training is not being put at the heart of firms' IT strategy, when it should. 'The panel still find it surprising that solicitors' practices invest very large sums of money in hardware and software and yet scrimp on their training budget,' he said.


There also seems to be ever more movement in the inevitable shift towards Microsoft, which has both its upsides and downsides.


On the positive side, Microsoft does make some great, usable products that the legal profession really loves, such as Outlook. Legal IT vendors have now, in general, seen the light about the pointlessness of putting energy into building their own e-mail software, instead choosing to plug en masse into the ever-popular Outlook to lesser or greater degrees.


It is also good to see more vendors offering systems, often built on Microsoft technology, that can generate reports on a much wider array of information, correlating previously difficult to compare subjects on an 'as required' basis.


These business intelligence (BI) tools used to be the preserve of very big companies. With BI capability now appearing for free in the 'lite' version of Microsoft's SQL Server 2005, these previously high-end capabilities could end up becoming basic requirements.


On the negative side, Microsoft makes software that even the most charitable commentator would say needs care and attention in patching and security updates.


Security should be a major issue in holding client data and internal information for pretty much every law firm, no matter of size, and relying heavily on Bill Gates' software means having a patch and security policy that is adhered to.


But security is not just about keeping viruses out. A service some vendors are now offering is disaster recovery, sometimes called business continuity. Whatever its moniker, some law firms seem to think this is just about backing up data, a view that concerns vendors but gives them very little room to move. If law firms think disaster recovery is just about back-up, it is very hard to get them to see how much bigger and more important the issue really is.


The Law Society will officially launch the 2006 Software Solutions guide alongside the Legal IT show in London next week.


The Legal Software Suppliers Association will be holding conferences for small and larger firms at the show, and will be publishing its research into how law firms use IT and what they want from it to attendees (see [2006] Gazette, 19 January, 9).


Free copies of the guide are sent to every law firm in England and Wales. The guide can also be downloaded from the Law Society's Web site. Visit: www.it.lawsociety.org.uk.






This year's Software Solutions guide firms and their products are:



Access Legal Systems

Access Practice Management System



AIM Professional Systems

Evolution InSight



AlphaLAW (formerly MSS)

Esprit and Vantage



Axxia Systems

Axxia



Civica Sytems

Galaxy Legal



DPS Software

One Office



Eclipse Legal Systems

Proclaim



Edgebyte Computers

Lawbyte



JCS Computing Solutions

Legal Ledger FiLOS



Linetime

Liberate



Mountain Software Group

Mountain Sofware PMS & Solicitors Accounts & Time



Opsis

Millennium Accounts, Opsis PMS and AML Custodian



Quill Computer Systems

Pinpoint Accounting Bureau



Solicitors Own Software

SOS Connect



TFB

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