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Getting to 3.1

As we launch TeamConnect Enterprise 3.1, I wanted to reflect for a moment on how we got to this point.  TeamConnect Enterprise 2.0, which was released in 2001, was ahead of its time in terms of Web-based user interfaces. The user interface simulated a workstation desktop, allowing the users to keep open multiple records and switch effortlessly between them, much as they did with the windows taskbar. In addition, the view for each record consisted of a global menu, a toolbar as well as tabbed view to that record – similar to a typical windows application. That user interface worked well for several years, but more recently feedback from users, now spoiled by the simple light-weight Web UIs of Amazon, Yahoo, etc., indicated that the user interface was clunky and required too many page refreshes and mouse clicks to get work done.

The idea for TeamConnect Enterprise 3.0 originated in early 2006. The core requirement was to develop a simplified user interface that would be intuitive on its own and would not require a user to read a manual to navigate. Another requirement was to minimize mouse clicks and page refreshes, leading to a much enhanced user experience. This was now possible with Asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX), a programming technique that had become quite popular and was the ad-hoc standard for developing perceivably faster and more responsive Web applications.

The primary focus being a new and improved UI, we completely rewrote TeamConnect’s presentation layer, using open source technologies like spring and the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to replace the proprietary UI framework of 2.x.  We used AJAX extensively to give us a "clean" and highly responsive UI, including minimizing the use of pop-ups. Now, a user could simply start typing in the value in a search field and the application would provide a drop down list of matching suggestions that could be selected without actually going to a search pop-up. Also, several operations, like adding project assignees, adding project relations and invoice line items, etc. no longer required a page refresh.

With the release of TeamConnect Enterprise 3.0, we also enabled end users to navigate the UI using the browsers navigation buttons. This allowed an end user to go back to a previously visited page using the browsers back button. This was a huge leap over 2.x, which, upon a user logging in, essentially launched another window with no browser controls visible – thus preventing the use of the back button. The undesirable side effect, of course, was that for every login there were two browser windows opened, one of which had to be manually closed. In 3.0, no additional browser windows are opened and a user can navigate between pages using the “back” and “forward” buttons of the browser, as if they were browsing around on the internet. Stay tuned for details on the clever bit of programming that made this possible.

While 3.0 was the “usability” release, a number of exciting new features and several very significant performance improvements around page rendering and caching in TeamConnect 3.1, make it the application to beat in its class and the reason I think clients should not hesitate to upgrade to it sooner rather than later. In subsequent blogs, I’ll visit features in the product that should make an immediate impact on user productivity.

Vished Kumar
Director of Software Development
Mitratech

Afshin Behnia on Today’s Mitratech Product News

We are very excited today to be rolling out a completely new product line, TeamConnect Express, which is designed for use by smaller legal departments.  The first product in the Express lineup is TeamConnect Express | e-Billing, which offers a standalone e-billing solution that can integrate with other matter management systems. But, the product also comes with a core matter management functionality so it can serve as a complete legal operations management solution for a small department. It’s available on a SaaS basis only.

The TeamConnect Express concept is intended to bring the kind of collaborative accountability firepower that we typically offer to global enterprises into the realm of the smaller legal department and mid-sized organization.   A lot of smaller departments are not being well served by their legal operations management solutions, so we want to make the fruits of our enterprise experience available to them.  In terms of standalone e-billing, which TeamConnect Express e-billing also offers, we are answering a very frequent request we heard from clients who wanted our kind of high quality e-billing offering, but available to integrate with their incumbent matter management solutions.

We’re also bringing out version 3.1 of our flagship TeamConnect Legal Suite.  Based on a lot of customer feedback, our team has really worked on delivering new features for international legal operations, improved usability, administration, vendor collaboration, searches and reporting.    We are now offering best in class support for VAT – the Value Added Tax used in Europe - which can cause a hassle for legal billing review in a worldwide legal department.  This new version, which features credit memo capabilities and support for virtually any non-U.S. tax scheme, also makes it a lot easier for legal departments to sync up with their outside counsel on billing guidelines and make sure that everyone’s in alignment with the billing policies they set up for each particular outside counsel firm.  With custom searches and reports exportable to Excel and PDF, we are trying to make TeamConnect even more user friendly, helping our clients become more productive by letting them use the tool their own way.

In IT terms, we’re extending TeamConnect’s technological advantage on a couple of different fronts.   We’re announcing support for four new servers, including IBM WebSphere WAS 7.0, Oracle 11G, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and JBOSS EAS 4.3.  TeamConnect now supports more than 40 different server platforms, making it the undisputed leader in platform support.  And, not only that, we’ve doubled the app’s processing speed so everyone can enjoy vastly improved system performance. 

Afshin Behnia
President and CEO
Mitratech
16 June, 2009
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What We Mean When We Talk about Collaborative Accountability

Mitratech pioneered the concept of collaborative accountability.  Collaborative accountability addresses the technological solutions to challenging business situations where a large number of people, often in multiple entities, must work together on highly sensitive information, such as lawsuits.  The challenge is to enable stakeholders to work effectively while at the same time preserving a high level of information security, confidentiality, and accountability for individual actions and communications.  Collaborative accountability applications (CAA) fill the gap between conventional enterprise collaboration tools and emerging specialized solutions for secure, traceable data management. In the former case, holistic capture, availability and traceability of all participative communications, document handling and distribution, time and expense accounting, and workflow are deficient relative to strict accountability requirements. In the latter case, data can be readily organized, found and retrieved, but the human element of collaborative participation is unassisted or ignored. Collaborative accountability applications combine modern group interaction functions with full-scope security, traceability, resource accounting and participation records to meet the expanding needs for high-accountability teamwork in business.  Mitratech’s TeamConnect products comprise the market’s first collaborative accountability solutions. The products combine easy workflow with accessible document management, holistic group communications, ready recall of collaborative content and traceable content handling.

Keeping Your Eye on the Tort Monster

In working with major enterprises on saving money in matter management, e-billing, and litigation holds, Mitratech is constantly focusing on the efficiency of legal operations and the productivity of the General Counsel’s office.  Indeed, research shows that large companies (with more than $1 billion in revenue) spend an average of about $31 million a year on legal operations, for a grand total of about $25 billion nationwide.  Wow, that does seem like a lot of money.  However, at the same time, let’s not take our eyes off the even more gigantic number: the settlements that American firms pay in tort cases. Towers Perrin reports that American businesses paid $252 billion in tort case settlements in 2008!  That’s almost 2% of US GDP.  The point is that while matter management efficiency is critical, the arguably bigger benefit of good matter management is the ability to optimize settlement spending and understand when to fight a case and when to settle – for how much and at what moment. That’s where a lot of the huge economic gains of matter management arise in the legal operations arena.