MatterMojo introduces new workflow capability

LONDON 26 April 2016 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has built a new workflow capability in MatterMojo.

MatterMojo is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms and legal departments to manage clients, matters, inception and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management, time recording and integrates with key document management providers. 

In the configuration area of MatterMojo, you are now able to create new ‘Workflow Definitions’ and specify where these can be run e.g. all matters, only a certain practice area etc. A Workflow Definition can have many ‘Milestone Definitions’ and those, in turn, can have many ‘Task Definitions’. From a matter, it will then be possible to create workflows, milestones and tasks automatically based on these definitions. A workflow tab allows you to drive the automation by creating new workflows and starting milestones which auto-generates the tasks.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “We have now started the journey to bridge the gap between matter management and case management. This is a significant milestone and the business is growing by the day”.

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About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® www.mattermojo.com is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

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MatterMojo® introduces a new time recording capability for UK & USA markets

LONDON 13 October 2015 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has built a new time recording capability in MatterMojo featuring common UTBMS code sets for phases, tasks and activities.

MatterMojo is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms to manage clients, matters, inception and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management and integrates with key document management providers.

Compliant with Jackson UTBMS litigation J-Codes and ABA litigation Codes (among others), the product allows users to quickly and easily record time entries against matters whilst ensuring the necessary phase, task and activity codes are also captured correctly. Time entries are summarised through easy to read time tiles on the MatterMojo user/matter dashboards and an export feature allows matter time reports to be exported to excel.

Andy Ellis of Practico Cost Lawyers, a MatterMojo customer and member of the Hutton Committee, volunteered time to the MatterMojo development team to help steer product design and development. Andy commented “It has been very refreshing to have a constructive dialogue with MatterMojo who clearly see the direction of travel with costs reporting standards and are working to provide a clean and affordable solution”.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “Although much has been spoken about the billable hour, lawyers will continue to record time if only to help reconcile costs. Responding to customer requests has prompted us to build this new capability with the help of experts from the legal market”.

Ad Coelum Technology continues to build out its product and in the short term it will be focusing on user requested enhancements and client collaboration.

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About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® www.mattermojo.com is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

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MatterMojo® for Office 365 integrates with Groups

LONDON, 30 September 2015 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has successfully integrated its client and matter management offering with Microsoft Office 365 Groups.

MatterMojo for Office 365, which is targeted at existing users of Microsoft Office 365, offers a seamless single sign-on experience providing integrated access to all the productivity features available across both products. MatterMojo for Office 365 is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms to manage clients, matters, inception and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management and integrates with key document management providers. Lawyers can enjoy all the benefits of Office 365 whilst managing their clients and matters efficiently.

Office 365 Groups brings together People, Conversations, Calendars and Files across Office 365. By linking together email conversations, file storage, and calendar event management, Groups create an integrated experience for teams to focus on group activity. Groups can be public to enable information sharing within your company, or private for teams that deal with sensitive subjects. Groups are also an integral part of Outlook 2016 and a number of apps have been released in recent weeks to enable Group collaboration on smartphones.

The integration uses MatterMojo’s new Connected App capability to link clients and matters to Groups. Once linked, users can access the Group’s OneDrive file store directly from within MatterMojo, providing native visibility of client and matter documents. This integrated experience will be extended over the coming months to include other Group features such as calendar and conversations, enhancing the collaboration capability even further.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “The idea of a group as a shared workspace for email, conversations, files, and calendar events where group members can conveniently collaborate and quickly get stuff done fits perfectly with MatterMojo. As a SaaS vendor building in the Microsoft Cloud, we share a common technology platform with Office 365 which allows us to provide fully integrated experiences very quickly”.

Ad Coelum Technology continues to build out its product and in the short term it will be focusing on user requested enhancements, time recording and client collaboration.

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About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® www.mattermojo.com is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

Two powerful new features released in MatterMojo® for Office 365

Two powerful new features released in MatterMojo® for Office 365

LONDON, 8 July 2015 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has released two new features in its client and matter management offering integrated with Microsoft Office 365.

Firstly, the company has released a new mail app in both Office 365 and Outlook 2013. This allows users to search for clients and matters using the search box directly within their email window and automatically find clients and matters in emails based on the presence of a known code in the subject line.

MatterMojo for Office 365 is targeted at existing users of Microsoft Office 365. It offers a seamless single sign on experience providing integrated access to all the productivity features available across both products.

MatterMojo for Office 365 is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms & legal departments to manage clients, matters, inception and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management and a lightweight document storage capability. Lawyers can enjoy all the benefits of Office 365 whilst managing their clients and matters efficiently.

Secondly, and in response to strong customer feedback, it is now also possible to define custom data capture screens for matters. This powerful new extensibility feature allows MatterMojo administrators to define context aware data screens and make them available to users at the global matter level, practice area level and by matter type.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “Based upon feedback from our users, we have quickly been able to deliver some great new features to MatterMojo and in the case of custom screens, lay a strong foundation for our Microsoft Power BI reporting integration, due for release later this year".

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About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® (www.mattermojo.com) is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

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MatterMojo® for Office 365 showcases at ABA TECHSHOW - Stand 819

MatterMojo® for Office 365 showcases at ABA TECHSHOW - Stand 819

LONDON, immediate release – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, announced that it will be showcasing an exciting new client and matter management offering integrated with Microsoft Office 365 at the ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago.

MatterMojo for Office 365, which is targeted at existing users of Microsoft Office 365, will offer a seamless single sign-on experience providing integrated access to all the productivity features available across both products.

MatterMojo for Office 365 is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms to manage clients, matters, inception, conflicts and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management and a lightweight document storage capability. Lawyers can enjoy all the benefits of Office 365 whilst managing their clients and matters efficiently.

Microsoft Office 365 delivers the power of cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, helping save time, money, and free up valued resources. Office 365 combines the familiar Microsoft Office desktop suite with cloud-based versions of Microsoft’s next-generation communications and collaboration services—including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Office Online, and Microsoft Lync Online—to help users be productive from virtually anywhere through the Internet.

To support the introduction of its new products, the company has launched a new website at www.mattermojo.com to showcase capabilities. Visitors to the site will be offered a FREE 30 day trial.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago is a terrific venue to debut our new MatterMojo offering. We encourage users to sign up for a free trial and welcome their feedback”.

“We are excited to see companies like Ad Coelum Technology create cloud-based solutions in the legal industry.  We’re pleased to see products like MatterMojo help law firms easily incorporate Microsoft Office 365 into their environments and provide lawyers with the significant benefits these cloud services provide,” said Nishan DeSilva, Sr. Director Business & Technology Strategy, Legal, Microsoft.

Ad Coelum Technology continues to build out its enterprise product suite with more news to follow later this year; in the medium term it will be focusing on user requested enhancements, client collaboration and native mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS.

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About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® (www.mattermojo.com) is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

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Exhibition Details & Media Contact: 

MatterMojo - ABA TECHSHOW - Stand 819

Tim Cheadle

CEO

Ad Coelum Technology Limited

tim.cheadle@adcoelumtechnology.com

www.mattermojo.com

@MatterMojo

@AdCoelum_Tech

MatterMojo Webinar - Matter Management as a Service from MatterMojo

MatterMojo are pleased to announce that we will be delivering a webinar on Tuesday, 31 March, at 16:00 BST. Join Paul Payne, CTO, and Tim Cheadle, CEO, to learn more about how MatterMojo can work in your law firm.

MatterMojo is targeted at law firms looking for an affordable, cloud-based client and matter management solution. Easily manage your clients, matters, contacts, tasks, and documents while improving your compliance and reducing risk, all via a simple but elegant portal that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office 365.

Delivered to law firms through a cloud-based subscription model, the proposition re-defines the way matter management software is deployed and consumed. Switching away from on-premises technology for the core platform drastically reduces deployment and upgrade complexity; allowing the company to focus on delivering new features and bug fixes through a process of continuous delivery. Through this bold step, MatterMojo promises to re-align the matter management experience alongside the world of consumer technology, where a seamless and enjoyable experience across multiple devices has become a normality.

If you would like to register for this webinar on the 31st, please click the following link:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3652181068986958337

Note: This webinar is exclusively for law firms and their staff.

If you are unable to attend this webinar but would like to discuss your requirements, please get in touch via support@mattermojo.com – we’ll be happy to arrange a demo of our solutions.

MatterMojo® for Office 365 launches in the USA and the UK

MatterMojo® for Office 365 launches in the USA and the UK

LONDON, 3 March 2015 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has launched an exciting new client and matter management offering integrated with Microsoft Office 365.
MatterMojo for Office 365, which is targeted at existing users of Microsoft Office 365, will offer a seamless single sign-on experience providing integrated access to all the productivity features available across both products.

MatterMojo for Office 365 is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms to manage clients, matters, inception, conflicts and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management and a lightweight document storage capability. Lawyers can enjoy all the benefits of Office 365 whilst managing their clients and matters efficiently.

Microsoft Office 365 delivers the power of cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, helping save time, money, and free up valued resources. Office 365 combines the familiar Microsoft Office desktop suite with cloud-based versions of Microsoft’s next-generation communications and collaboration services—including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Office Online, and Microsoft Lync Online—to help users be productive from virtually anywhere through the Internet.

To support the introduction of its new products, the company has launched a new website at www.mattermojo.com to showcase capabilities. Visitors to the site will be offered a FREE 30 day trial.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “Early demand for Office 365 integration has driven us to a parallel launch in both the United States and the United Kingdom. We encourage users to sign up for a FREE trial and welcome their feedback”.

Ad Coelum Technology continues to build out its enterprise product suite with more news to follow later this year; in the medium term it will be focusing on user requested enhancements, client collaboration and native mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS.

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About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® www.mattermojo.com is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

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Media Contacts: 

Tim Cheadle
CEO
Ad Coelum Technology Limited
tim.cheadle@adcoelumtechnology.com
@AdCoelum_Tech
@MatterMojo
@cheadle_tim

MatterMojo getting started guide

Accessing MatterMojo from within Office 365 (Office 365 Users Only)

MatterMojo for Office 365 provides a quick access link for Office 365 in the navigation menu allowing you to easily hop over to Office 365 from within MatterMojo.

The reverse is also possible, but requires each user to add MatterMojo to their Office 365 'Apps launcher' menu. This makes for a more integrated user experience and only takes a second...

1. Once you have signed into MatterMojo at least once, open the apps selection window in Office 365 using the top left navigation button (the one with the nine squares) in Office 365 and click on 'My apps'.

2. From the apps list click on the three dots next to MatterMojo and select 'Pin to app launcher'

3. You can now access MatterMojo quickly and easily from the apps launcher as shown below!

MatterMojo Admin Settings

Before you start using MatterMojo there are a couple of useful administration settings that should be configured based on your law firm's needs. These settings are only available to MatterMojo administrators (you are automatically an administrator if you are the one who signed-up!).

Practice Areas and Work Types

To setup the different categories of work carried out by your organisation, select the 'Configuration' option from the Admin area. This will default to the Practice Area screen where you can add new practice areas and associated work types. This is a category/sub-category structure allowing matters to be categorised and filtered.

To create new practice areas hit the create (plus) button in the 'Practice Areas' header. You can then create work types for that practice area by ensuring it is highlighted and then hitting create (plus) in the 'Work Types' header.

You can also choose to add some default practice areas and adjust them accordingly for your needs by hitting the 'Create Defaults' button.

Note: Once a practice area or work type has been used to categorise a matter it cannot be deleted.

Link Types

When creating links between records in MatterMojo it is possible to assign a link type to make the relationship more meaningful. For example, when creating a link from an organisation to an office address, a link type such as 'Registered Office' could be used. 

To create a new link type select the desired link context and hit the create (plus) button in the 'Link Types' header. You can also specify whether you want to allow many links of this type or just one.

The contexts that can be given a link type are as follows:

• Person - Address
• Organisation - Address
• Matter - Private Client Contact
• Matter - Organisation Client Contact
• Matter - Party
• Party - Private Contact
• Party - Organisation Contact

You can also choose to add some default link types for each type of link and adjust them accordingly for your needs by hitting the 'Create Defaults' button.

Getting the most out of your Office 365 Azure Active Directory

If you already have an Azure subscription for managing your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) you are ready to sign-up for MatterMojo and use your Office 365 account to sign-in. If not please read on to find out how to prepare your Office 365 account for single sign-on with MatterMojo…

What is Azure AD?

Azure AD is a cloud-based service for managing user access to applications. It is part of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and underpins a wide range of Microsoft online products, including Office 365.

When you sign up to Office 365 you are asked to create a domain ending in ‘onmicrosoft.com’ e.g. mylawfirm.onmicrosoft.com. Behind the scenes Microsoft is creating an Azure AD for this domain to manage security and access for your instance of Office 365. Every time you sign in to Office 365 you are actually signing into Azure AD which validates your identity and passes this information to Office 365.

Azure AD can also be used to manage access to a wide range of non-Microsoft applications. This is great news for users because they only need to remember one set of credentials and it is great news for administrators because they can control access to thousands of applications from a central place.
This great capability is only available from within the Microsoft Azure portal. Fortunately registration is simple for Office 365 users and only takes a couple of minutes...

Enabling full Azure AD functionality for your Office 365 Instance

1. Log in to Office 365 as an administrator and navigate to the Admin Center (you will need to ask your Office 365 administrator to follow these steps if you are not an administrator yourself).

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand menu and click on ‘Admin \ Azure AD’

3. This launches a special Microsoft Azure sign-up page where you will need to enter a few details – no credit card is required but you do have to verify you are not a robot by entering a code sent to your mobile phone.

4. Once you have verified your identity you will be taken to the Azure subscriptions page where you will see your new subscription in a pending state.

Once your subscription is ready, click on the 'Portal’ link on the right hand-side to go to a cut-down version of the Azure portal where you can take full advantage of your Azure AD. To access the Azure portal again later the link is https://manage.windowsazure.com.

Now you have enabled Azure AD for your Office 365 account you can use it to sign-up and manage access to MatterMojo and thousands more applications. Head over to the Azure AD Market Place to see this ever growing list of cloud applications that support single sign-on using Azure AD.

That’s it for the sign-up steps! If you face any issues with the steps above or would like more information please contact us at support@mattermojo.com.

Ad Coelum Technology launches new online client and matter management software product - MatterMojo® for Business

Ad Coelum Technology launches new online client and matter management software product - MatterMojo® for Business

LONDON, 2 February 2015 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited, a legal software business focused on making lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has launched an exciting new client and matter management offering.
MatterMojo for Business targeted at mid and small law firms is an affordable cloud-based matter management system which allows law firms to manage clients, matters, inception, conflicts and risk via a simple but elegant portal. It also has contact and task management and a lightweight document storage capability.

In addition and over the coming weeks, the company will also launch MatterMojo for Microsoft Office 365 which is targeted at existing users of Office 365. It will offer a seamless single sign on experience providing integrated access to all the productivity features available across both products.
MatterMojo represents a new era of matter management technology, referred to by Ad Coelum Technology as ‘Matter Management as a Service’. Delivered to law firms through a cloud-based subscription model, the proposition re-defines the way matter management software is deployed and consumed. Switching away from on-premises technology for the core platform drastically reduces deployment and upgrade complexity; allowing the company to focus on delivering new features and bug fixes through a process of continuous delivery. Through this bold step, MatterMojo promises to re-align the matter management experience alongside the world of consumer technology, where a seamless and enjoyable experience across multiple devices has become a normality.
To support the introduction of its new products, the company has launched a new website at www.mattermojo.com to showcase capabilities. Visitors to the site will be offered a FREE 30 day trial.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “Our aim with Matter Management as a Service is to provide a simple, clean and powerful experience that continuously evolves and delights our users, without onerous long term tie in clauses or unnecessary capital expenditure. We encourage users to sign up for a FREE trial and welcome their feedback”.

“Solution providers like Ad Coelum Technology are pivotal in the cloud transformation,” said Vibhor Kapoor, Director, Microsoft Azure Product Marketing.  “As new cloud scenarios emerge, companies like Ad Coelum Technology are harnessing the power of Azure to provide their customers with innovative options.”

Ad Coelum Technology continues to build out its enterprise product suite with more news to follow later this year; in the medium term it will be focusing on user requested enhancements, client collaboration and native mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS.

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About

Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology. Ad Coelum Technology’s vision is to create a more productive legal profession by evolving case & matter management utilising cloud, mobile & social technology enabling a rich and compelling user experience for today’s lawyer and their clients. Built upon Microsoft Azure with significant benefits over on-premises technology; MatterMojo® www.mattermojo.com is a cloud-based matter management system that delivers fee earner productivity across multiple devices.

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Media Contacts: 

Tim Cheadle
CEO
Ad Coelum Technology Limited
tim.cheadle@adcoelumtechnology.com
@AdCoelum_Tech
@cheadle_tim

Building MatterMojo Episode 3 - Mobility Vision

In this video we'll be focusing on how we aim to improve law firm productivity by providing mobile access to client and matter information stored both on-premises and in the cloud.

The first advantage of MatterMojo’s cloud-first architecture is that the full web experience can always be accessed from the smartphone browser. Although it is not intended for heavy use on a smartphone, today's screen resolutions and MatterMojo’s responsive web design make it perfectly useable, providing users with the full power of MatterMojo from any internet connected device.

For true mobile scenarios where consumption of data is high and input relatively low, we intend to provide native MatterMojo smartphone apps for users on the move. In this video we will focus on our vision for Windows Phone and social media integration with LinkedIn.

Building MatterMojo Episode 2: Integration Vision

In this second video of the series we shift our focus towards MatterMojo's integration potential. We illustrate how a law firm's existing on-premises and cloud investments could be combined with MatterMojo, providing a fully integrated matter management experience.

The video includes demonstrations of cloud-based integration with NetDocuments for a seamless document management experience, and a Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance installed on-premises provides an alternative data source as part of the MatterMojo Inception Wizard.

Building MatterMojo Episode 1: Authentication

Welcome to building MatterMojo. Over the coming months, we will be sharing a number of videos providing an inside look at our new Matter Management as a Service solution.

In this first video we explain how law firms can leverage their existing Active Directory to authenticate users against our Matter Management Service in the cloud. On-premises Windows Service Active Directories can be automatically synchronised with Azure Active Directory, providing users with a seamless cloud authentication experience, without the need for new usernames or passwords.

We also see how the MatterMojo identity token can provide access to all other Microsoft cloud technologies and a growing list of other SaaS applications.

Realise the benefits – Managing Partner/Finance Director/IT Director/Lawyer

Traditional legal business applications have often been very complicated. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them can be quite daunting and expensive. Law firms often need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them.

Legal business applications are moving to the cloud. It’s not just a fad - the shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. Looking forward, the next decade of cloud computing promises new ways to collaborate everywhere, anytime; especially through mobile devices.

In order to help articulate the benefits of adopting cloud computing and matter management as a service, we have summarised a quick overview below:

Managing Partners/Senior Partner:

·         Create competitive advantage by utilizing the latest productivity applications

·         Build a collaborative and connected enterprise leveraging consumer technology

·         Improve staff morale via investing in the latest tools

·         Maximise business continuity and minimize downtime

·         Establish new lines of business quickly or embrace acquired practices fast

CFO/Finance Directors:

·         Save costs and improve your cash flow management through a subscription model

·         Better manage compliance and risk initiatives

·         Simplify your technology investment, by reducing or potentially removing the need to manage complicated on premise servers and eradicate expensive replacement cycles

IT Directors and Managers:

·         Replace or leverage tired looking, legacy investments

·         Reduce total cost of ownership

·         Introduce exciting productivity apps

·         Integrate complex, disparate systems

·         Ensure systems are compliant and secure

Lawyers:

·         Improve utilisation

·         Increase collaboration with clients

·         Access information effectively whilst on the move

·         Quickly intake new clients whilst managing risk

Want to learn more? Sign up for our Registered Interest Group - http://www.adcoelumtechnology.com/MatterMojo/RIG

Ad Coelum Technology successfully obtains trademark for new matter management software product - MatterMojo®

LONDON, 10 September 2013 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumtechnology.com), a new legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced that it has successfully trademarked its new matter management product as MatterMojo®.

MatterMojo represents a new era of matter management technology, referred to by Ad Coelum Technology as ‘Matter Management as a Service’. Delivered to law firms through a cloud-based subscription model, the proposition re-defines the way matter management software is deployed and consumed. Switching away from on-premises technology for the core platform drastically reduces deployment and upgrade complexity; allowing the company to focus on delivering new features and bug fixes through a process of continuous delivery. Through this bold step, MatterMojo promises to re-align the matter management experience alongside the world of consumer technology, where a seamless and enjoyable experience across multiple devices has become a normality.

To support the introduction of its early product preview, the company has re-designed its website at www.adcoelumtechnology.com to showcase capabilities. Visitors to the site will also find the newly published ‘MatterMojo Manifesto’, a set of six principles that govern the company’s product/service delivery in the cloud computing era.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “Our aim with Matter Management as a Service is to provide a simple, clean and powerful experience that continuously evolves and delights our users, without onerous long term tie in clauses or unnecessary capital expenditure. We encourage users to sign up for our Registered Interest Group (www.adcoelumtechnology.com/mattermojo/rig) to help shape the product vision and we will shortly be launching a video channel to provide mini clips of the technology in action”.

Campaign for Real SaaS - Introducing Matter Management as a Service

Large established legal IT vendors with an on-premises customer base face serious challenges retaining customers as they attempt to move legacy applications to the cloud. But what about new smaller vendors? Vendors who have no legacy and live in a 'cloud-first' world?

Uninhibited by the effects of inertia, they will be the ones to drive innovation and force the big players to change. The implications of the Legal Services Act, combined with the cloud computing era, represents an unprecedented catalyst for innovative new technologies to emerge. But in order to capitalise on this opportunity, smaller vendors must be enablers of change. Leaders of such companies must cast aside the principles and values that once brought them safety inside corporate super tankers of old and make bold new decisions that reflect the agility provided by their new leaner vessels…

How do we get there?

Dealing with the headache of legacy assets, portfolio consolidation attempts and the need to support multiple product versions for many existing customers makes cloud adoption an uphill struggle for incumbent vendors. Smaller vendors on the other hand, find themselves in the luxurious position of being able to make bold decisions that not only drive innovation, but also set a precedent that established vendors must meet in order to survive.

Here's a thought...

The legal industry has become a beacon for innovation and high productivity enabled through a shift from complex, time consuming and costly software projects to a thriving market place for commodity services consumed by law firms in the cloud.

Sounds good? We all want to get there, but we need to accept a few harsh realities first:

• Vendors can't host legacy applications in a data centre and call it 'cloud computing'. True cloud means elasticity, broad network access (e.g. mobile), resource pooling and self-service. See the definition of cloud provided by NIST.
• Law firms can't expect SaaS to deliver savings if they demand an end-to-end environment all to themselves. Multi-tenancy is the key to significant cost savings. Law firms and vendors must work together to analyse data storage and processing at a more granular level to identify candidates for cloud resource pooling.
• Data is not necessarily safer in the law firm than in the cloud. How 'safe' is a law firms on-premises infrastructure compared to the multi-billion dollar cloud data centres operated by the likes of Microsoft and Amazon? Security is multi-faceted – people, hardware, networks, buildings. Very few firms can compete on all these levels and should they even try when it is not their core business?
• Diehards should not stifle innovation. If mid/large law firms continue to insist that the PMS system must remain on-premises this should not hinder adoption of cloud elsewhere. Enhanced connectivity scenarios and higher user volumes make front-office systems perfect candidates for migration to the cloud. It shouldn’t be all or nothing.

The clue is in the name

When you hear the term Software as a Service or SaaS, what do you think? Most people concentrate on the hosting aspect as being the 'service'. To drive SaaS adoption in mid/large law firms, we must concentrate on how SaaS improves the lives of end-users not just IT professionals. 

Ultimately it is the software and the way functionality is consumed by users that should constitute the service. With that in mind, I propose the following new principles for vendors of modern legal SaaS offerings:

• Don't sell a product, sell a service. Better still… an experience.
• There is no such thing as a version - all customers are on the same version... the current version.
• Allow services to evolve continuously in direct response to customer feedback. 
• Allow new features to be configured so users can manage how and when they receive them.
• Identity components fit for multi-tenancy to maximise resource pooling. 

So what does this all mean? It means we are on the verge of a new era of legal technology, where the end user is in much closer contact with the vendor.

Introducing Matter Management as a Service from Ad Coelum Technology

Users of our cloud-based Matter Management solution will experience something drastically different. They will consume Matter Management as a Service:

• Continuous delivery of new functionality. Why should users wait months or even years for essential matter management features? We keep users productive and competitive by ensuring our service accurately reflects the current needs of the legal profession. No scary big bang upgrades. Continuous smooth evolution where the user remains in control.
• Users own the roadmap. We will use technologies such as UserVoice to manage feedback from within the service itself, allowing users to suggest new functionality and/or vote for functionality proposed by others.
• Same day bug fixes. If an issue is identified with our service, all users receive the resolution as soon as a fix has been identified and deployed. Because everyone is using the same service, many users will not even notice the issue existed.
• No long-term tie in. We must all learn to live and die by the quality of service we deliver. The days of large capital-led deals are over. Need some service guarantees for a period of time? No problem – let’s talk, but we won’t lock anyone down who desires the freedom to switch off at will.

A law firm’s matter management needs, addressed through a single service. That's what real SaaS is all about. 

Paul Payne, CTO
@paulpayne1

Continuous Delivery - iteration and the importance of early feedback

A month has passed since I joined Ad Coelum Technology and it's been great to sit down with law firms and discuss the merits (and challenges) of cloud computing. One thing we have covered at length is the notion of continuous delivery and the opportunity it presents for delivering a significantly better experience to customers.

To help explain why I will be making continuous delivery a key aspect of our cloud-based Matter Management service, but let's quickly change gears and talk about...cars.

The car in front is a Toyota (but why?)

In the 1950's, American quality guru W. Edwards Deming set out to help Japan rebuild its manufacturing industry in the wake of the second world war. His 'Plan-Do-Check-Act' philosophy centered around the notion of continuous iteration and the importance of early feedback in the engineering process. This agility gave Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota a distinct quality edge over the traditional production processes of western counterparts, allowing them to dominate manufacturing through the late 70's and 80's.

This is the single most important lesson we can learn when it comes to quality and engineering.

In 1991 James P. Womack coined a new term for this approach following a $5m study of Toyota. He called it 'Lean'.

The software industry, perhaps distracted by the looming millennium bug, took a further decade to catch on...

'Agile' - easy to say, hard to do

The Agile Manifesto (2001) marked a turning point in software development and a much needed departure away from waterfall as the dominant approach. We have since attempted to apply all the great lessons of Japanese car building to software development. KANBAN, Kaizan, Just-In-Time - you name it, we found a home for it, most recently under the banner of 'Lean Software Development'.

The problem however, is that all too often we still revert to waterfall because it feels easier and safer. It is almost always the path of least resistance - exec sponsors feel safer because they can see a well defined plan and manage through conformance to it. Customers can't object to the requirements or design because they aren't involved, and reputations can't be damaged because no early software is released for feedback.

Fortunately, opportunities to revert to type are being eroded by the nature of cloud-computing.

Continuous delivery, enabled by the cloud

At Ad Coelum Technology we have the luxury of no legacy software, no existing processes and no existing culture. This represents the perfect opportunity to adopt continuous delivery from the get go. Building on a cloud PaaS like Windows Azure means that the deployment issues surrounding on-premises deployments are a thing of the past:

If we fix a bug, ALL customers benefit from that fix as soon as it is deployed to the cloud. In most cases, a vast percentage of users will not even notice/be impacted by the change.

If we add a new feature ALL customers can make use of it as soon as it is deployed to the cloud. We will also offer customers/users the choice of how they adopt major new features:

• Early adopter? Great! You can use preview versions of the feature as soon as it is deployed and help us to improve functionality through continuous delivery and feedback.
• More conservative? No problem. You will only receive the feature once it has been fully tried and tested

I'm not about to commit to any kind of release cadence at this stage, but every 3-4 weeks for new features is where we need to be to ensure our development efforts are fully aligned with the needs of our customers.

Make no mistake - putting continuous delivery at the heart of our philosophy will bring a whole new set of pressures and challenges. It requires a development operations rethink that will push the quality bar to new levels and inject much needed intensity and pressure into the development process.

But these are good pressures and exciting challenges. Continuous delivery has started...

Paul Payne, CTO.
@paulpayne1
 

Ad Coelum Technology announces new Board appointments…

 LONDON, 3 June 2013 – Ad Coelum Technology Limited (www.adcoelumlegaltech.com), a new legal software business focused on helping make lawyers more productive through enjoyable technology, today announced new appointments to its Board of Directors.

Paul Payne joins as CTO. Prior to joining Ad Coelum Technology, Paul held the position of product development manager, leading large teams to success on LexisNexis UK’s most strategic software development projects. Paul’s management and leadership experience is backed by a decade of technical experience in roles ranging from Analyst/Programmer to Enterprise Architect, specialising in Microsoft technologies. Having designed, engineered and managed products across the full legal software spectrum (Matter/Case – Visualfiles, PMS, CRM and DMS), Paul has both breadth and depth of legal IT knowledge. He holds an MBA with distinction from Leeds University Business School and a first class honours degree in Information Systems.

Phil Whitehead joins as a Non-Executive Director. Phil is the founder and CEO of Jambu Legal; a consultancy that helps law firms maximise profitability by streamlining processes and highlighting business efficiencies. Prior to Jambu, Phil has headed up the IT function for 3 of the top 100 UK law firms - DWF, Hugh James and Shakespeares and in his time has implemented all of the major systems that enable a law firm to operate in a highly efficient and profitable manner. Phil’s experience includes turning around underperforming business processes by working closely and collaboratively with the teams that ultimately benefit from his decade in legal IT.

Darren Atkinson joins as Non-Executive Director. In additional to Ad Coelum Technology, Darren is a serving executive team member at Prisymid Limited helping expand operations on a global basis in a market leading label lifecycle management solution provider to the Life Sciences Industry. Prior to Prisymid, Darren served as CTO at FormScape Software Limited and provided technical and strategic leadership to the group through a market driven product expansion that including raising funding from Venture Partners in Europe and the US. Darren has held a number of directorships in software businesses across UK & Europe, US and South Africa over his career, many of which have delivered solutions into highly regulated sectors requiring sophisticated version control, auditing, workflow and secure document process automation.

Tim Cheadle, CEO, commented “I’m delighted to start building out a highly skilled and complementary team that will be responsible for delivering an exciting new proposition that will change the case & matter management landscape offering easier collaboration with clients, reduced maintenance costs and enhanced mobile and device access.”

Over the coming weeks, the company will be showcasing its new product capability out in the market.

Cloud computing for lawyers not dummies! Part Four - Security and Privacy

In our last blog, we explored cloud economics. In this piece, we will discuss the important topics of security and privacy in relation to the cloud and more specially Microsoft Windows Azure (the cloud platform that underpins our matter management application).

We value the privacy and security of your data and they remain amongst our top concerns. Much has been written about these topics in recent times and in this instance we'll focus our attention on the benefits of Microsoft's Trust Centre http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/trust-center/

Security

Windows Azure runs in data centers managed and operated by Microsoft Global Foundation Services (GFS). These geographically dispersed data centers comply with key industry standards, such as ISO/IEC 27001:2005, for security and reliability. They are managed, monitored, and administered by Microsoft operations staff that have years of experience in delivering the world’s largest online services with 24 x 7 continuity.

Privacy

The Windows Azure Privacy Statement describes the specific privacy policy and practices that govern customers’ use of Windows Azure.

The Windows Azure privacy statement states that Microsoft will not disclose customer data, administrator data, payment data or support data outside of Microsoft or its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates except as directed by a customer or described in the privacy statement. The key aspect of the privacy statement regarding customer data is set out as follows:

Microsoft will not disclose Customer Data to a third party (including law enforcement, other government entity, or civil litigant; excluding our subcontractors) except as you direct or unless required by law. Should a third party contact us with a demand for Customer Data, we will attempt to redirect the third party to request it directly from you. As part of that, we may provide your basic contact information to the third party. If compelled to disclose Customer Data to a third party, we will use commercially reasonable efforts to notify you in advance of a disclosure unless legally prohibited.

Microsoft complies with the E.U. Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) which sets a baseline for handling personal data in the European Union.  The E.U. has stricter privacy rules than the U.S. and most other countries. 

Microsoft operates Windows Azure data centres around the world. Customers may specify the geographic regions where their data will be stored. Available regions are shown below.

 

Ad Coelum Technology will store data in the customer's home region. For customers in the UK, this will be Ireland, however Microsoft will also replicate data across sub-regions (Netherlands) for enhanced data durability in case of a major data centre outage.

We're working with a first class, secure cloud platform to bring peace of mind to law firms and their clients.

Cloud computing for lawyers not dummies! Part Three - Economics

In our last article we covered cloud service and deployment models. In this piece, we will focus on the reasons for adopting cloud and some of the economic arguments underlying the technology choice.

A recent Legal IT survey conducted in conjunction with InPractice www.inpractice.co.uk highlighted some great reasons for cloud adoption.



Benefits of cloud adoption

Cost was the number one driver followed by client collaboration and mobile access. So does cloud really drive down ownership costs? Let's explore some of the financial benefits of cloud adoption...

CapEx - certainly you can expect a significant reduction in Capex (aside from portal connection fees) as dependency on "owned" (read "up front cost") servers reduces or disappears based upon whether the IT infrastructure resides partially or wholly elsewhere.

Hardware - Can be more fully utilised, smoothing out demand and leveraging economies of scale from your chosen cloud provider.

Power - Less hardware onsite equals less power consumed. Save energy and you'll be greener too!

Resilience - Typical clouds have several locations for their data centers, and they mirror your data and applications across at least two of them. You don't have to provision for duplicate hardware in case of failure/outage.

Staffing costs - although a somewhat taboo subject, cloud computing does reduce the need for on-premise staff or more positively allows sensible redeployment of the in-house IT resource pool.

So what's the bottom line? Industry analysts predict a cost saving somewhere between 20-30% when cloud is fully embraced.

Moving away from legacy technology and the cost argument, we believe that the real benefits come in the form of improved collaboration for lawyers and their clients. A cloud based portal approach opens up the possibility to communicate seamlessly from mobile, tablet and desktop. Combine this with a more compelling user interface and everybody wins with an enjoyable experience.

In summary, competitive advantage can be gained by adopting Ad Coelum Technology:

• Reducing total cost of ownership through a cloud subscription pricing model
• Strong integration with legacy on-premise solutions and Microsoft applications such as Office and SharePoint
• Vastly improved connectivity for mobile scenarios, incorporating social media features and enhanced collaboration with clients