Keystone makes sale to big US law firm

By ADAM GIFFORD

Legal practice software designer Keystone Solutions, now part of Solution 6, has made its first sale in the United States to the law firm Howrey Simon Arnold & White based in Washington DC.

Solution 6's president of global solutions, Kaye Sycamore, said the US was a tough market to crack.

"The top 100 firms, which are our target market, are a closed club and only a handful of systems come up for renewal each year," Sycamore said.

"There is a strong conservative streak in American law firms, and we are considered new to the US no matter how well we may be installed elsewhere."

Keystone won the multimillion- dollar job when Howrey was 14 months into implementing a system from a US-based competitor, Elite.

"We focused on the fact Keystone was real time, so all management information and customer service information is available up to date anywhere at any time," she said.

"Howrey has offices around the globe, and it wants to bring them together into unified practices. It saw Keystone as the only global real-time solution."

The Keystone system, which runs on an Oracle database, is due to go live in the second quarter of 2003.

Howrey chief financial officer Barbara Preston said the firm had three main practice groups - intellectual property, antitrust and complex global litigation - each with legal, management and business teams.

"We have around 800 fee-earners working out of nine offices in three countries, but at the same time we have a 'one firm' strategy.

"Our new system will give us the technology we need to deliver on that strategy: to connect our people, rather than just our offices, and to weld together specialist teams, purpose-designed for client needs."

As well as automated time and billing, Keystone will deliver client management, giving practice team leaders and managers information on individual lawyers' workload and detailed client information.

Preston said Howrey wanted a system which could handle information on a strategic and a tactical level.

"It's the strategic decisions that make or break us in the long term. We tend to take on clients for life, and conflicts of interest are taken extremely seriously. Our new system will give us online entity and matter management applications which will provide us with a more strategic understanding of the existing and potential scope of our clients' business so we can minimise conflicts of interest, but maximise growth opportunities for the future."

Sycamore said Keystone expected to complete another two large US sales in the next few months.

It was also well advanced on implementation of a $22 million system for the world's largest law firm, London-based Clifford Chance, which has 3000 lawyers. That job included integrating Keystone with Oracle e-Business suite. Auckland Oracle specialist Theta designed adapters.

Solution 6 Group