Top firms join the Elite

INSIDER INFORMATION: firms preferred choice of system

The Elite practice management system is the most popular legal accounting package among the top 100 UK law firms, according to recent research.

A survey by specialist IT publication Legal Technology Insider (LTI) found that 26 of the 100 largest firms had implemented the Elite system, with Axxia in second place with 19 firms, and Solution 6's products third with 15.

There was a notable trend of the larger firms choosing the Elite PMS - five of the top ten and 14 of the top 30 did - while Axxia's package featured prominently among the firms placed 70 to 100 in terms of size.

Nigel Nelson, international finance systems controller at City firm Lovells, an Elite user, said: 'There was a dearth of good practice systems in the UK in the 1990s, so many firms started to look across to the US, where Elite cater for 50% of the top practices.

Lots of firms like it because it can be used as a desktop application that allows you to request, and sometimes do your own billing.'

Mr Nelson said Elite has remained popular with firms because it pursues constant dialogue with users.

The LTI research also looked at which document management systems law firms implemented and found the Hummingbird portfolio of products the most widely used, with 38 of the top 100 practices choosing them.

The second most popular was the offering from iManage, which was implemented in 23 firms in the survey.

The Solicitec and Axxia case management systems were selected by 16 firms apiece and jointly topped that category, while 65% of those firms with a client relationship management system used Interaction.

Of the top firms, only 29 had digital dictation systems firm-wide, the most popular proving to be BigHand's TotalSpeech.

Andrew Towler