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LawBot X Will Match Users to Law Firms

Newly re-launched LawBot X not only helps people clarify legal issues but also matches them to a law firm. LawBot and the newly branded LawBot X is the creation of a group of students at Cambridge University, UK. Before, LawBot used decision tree reasoning and now it uses data driven intelligence. The choice of platform is surprising: facebook messenger. LawBot X is coming to eight countries including Australia. To help it launch its Legal Network and Corporate Analytics Product in the United…

The first step to join the legal services innovation race

There is an innovations race in the legal services market which is in many cases sidelining “traditional” law firms. Clients want new and better ways to satisfy their legal services needs and there is no shortage of service providers willing to offer new solutions. At the minimum, lawyers and law firm leaders should inform themselves about what is happening in the legal services market and what is driving this change. Even better, law firms have the opportunity to be innovators…

Don’t fear a steep downturn in NSW conveyancing

Sydney dwelling values have climbed 78.8% over the last five years. It is an incredible rise and is illustrated in the graph below [top line]. [source: CoreLogic] For the last couple of years there have been plenty of commentators predicting that it has reached its peak. The latest indicators are that Sydney price growth has slowed. The next couple of months could show a retreat in prices.  If prices do fall, will we be faced with a conveyancing apocalypse?  This is unlikely.…

Can’t imagine not being on the iManage platform

Three years into Johnson Winter & Slattery's (JWS) use of the iManage document management system, Ross Forgione, Chief Information Officer of JWS says "looking at the products that are in the market place right now, I can't imagine not being on the iManage platform."  Surveying the users before selecting the new document management system (DMS) Forgione conducted a firm-wide survey asking what features were most important in a new DMS and placed this data into a results traceability matrix. During the RFP process, this information was…

Partners of Major Law Firms – Where Are They Now?

Where are the partners of 2014? We looked at the partner-number statistics of the Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) July 2014 list of major firms and lined them up against AFR’s current 2017 list. AFR’s list in 2017 had 16 more “major” firms than in 2014. This year there were 51 firms in the list. Most of the new entrants to the list were not major in the sense of having a large number of partners. What is a major law…

Why are so many firms adopting Smokeball conveyancing software?

Legal Practice Intelligence (LPI) interviewed Paul Psaltis (PP), General Manager of Smokeball, upon news that 200 firms and 700 active users have adopted Smokeball in the past 11 months. LPI: Why are firms choosing Smokeball? PP: Conveyancing professionals love the features and the support we offer: features such as easy settlement financials and integrations with Microsoft Office, PEXA and InfoTrack. The support team consists of industry experts and ex-conveyancers who have walked in their clients’ shoes. Their approach to support…

Remote working: resistant employers face an unstoppable trend – the issue is to set it up for success

Workplace psychologist George Mylonas MAPS, says that in the right circumstances, remote work – or telecommuting, which is performed by about one-quarter of Australian workers – offers a win-win situation for both employers and employees. Offering remote work as standard practice rather than a perk or privilege is the key to successful implementation of the practice, a workplace psychology expert will tell the 2017 APS College of Organisational Psychologists Conference, to be held in Sydney, 13-15 July. Mr Mylonas will…

The Secret Legal-Tech Product with US$10.5m Funding

While the product is secret, the amount raised to develop it has been all over the internet. Atrium LTS has raised US$10.5 million to revolutionise legal services and transform the delivery of corporate legal services. Have you ever had a good idea for software, had a few coffees with friends and contacts and raised A$14 million? Probably not, and in the legal services market this is exceptional for a concept product. Part of the success of being able to access…