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TECH SUPPORT will be "cautious, but not too cautious" in its spending and expects to grow fairly slowly, the company is "solid and profit- able," he says. LexUM today has two main platforms on which it builds solutions: LexEDO for document management and LexFind for enterprise search. There are also optional modules, such as LexView for generating documents in e-book format. The enterprise search product is based on popular open-source search engine Lucene. Open-source software is devel- oped by volunteer programmers but then often adopted by commercial develop- ers that modify it, add functionality, and provide professional maintenance. This is what LexUM is doing. "We adapted it for legal information," explains Lemyre. "On top of Lucene, we built a query manager that can better recognize legal expressions. And we implemented other improvements specifically for legal." The document management product MYCASE INC. if the information is sitting on a server in the United States? These are relevant questions when considering MyCase W Client Manager, an intriguing new software-as-a-service (SaaS) client "extranet" product from MyCase Inc. in the U.S. MyCase charges US$19.99 per lawyer per month to use the service, which includes storage of documents and data. (You can sign up for a free 45-day trial.) The service allows smaller fi rms to do what some larger fi rms already do: establish an extranet or private, password-protected web site where lawyers and clients can post documents, messages, requests, and appointments related to a case. Clients can also synchronize their MyCase calendar with the calendar they use regularly, as long as it uses or supports the iCalendar fi le format. It is possible to synchronize with an Outlook calendar, for example. Firms that use extranets claim they save lawyers' time and reduce miscommunication and missed deadlines. The response from MyCase on the security issue is similar to what a lot of SaaS providers say: the company uses the same kind of encryption technology, 128-bit SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), that banks use in their online transaction systems. If you bank online, that may be answer enough. If not, you may still wonder. The software itself is simple enough. It presents lists or calendar views of events, documents, re- minders, and the like in several tabbed views: home, appointments, documents, news, contact attorney. When we tested it using Google's Chrome browser, some functions did not work, such as viewing fi les stored at the site. They worked fi ne with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, however. Even if you ultimately balk at entrusting confi dential client information to MyCase, it's worth check- ing out. The price is reasonable and the 45-day trial is no strings attached. You can try MyCase and then ditch it if you decide you don't like or trust it. — GB ould you trust your communications with clients to a startup web company? Could you be sure enough of client information remaining confi dential? Especially comes more out of the lab's efforts to build legal document bases inexpensively by automating the process of indexing, organizing, and publishing. This was essential when working on underfunded non-profit projects such as CanLII. "Now we're packaging this code into products," says Mokanov. LexUM insists its technology can compete with major commercial prod- ucts. Where the company lags, Lemyre admits, is in marketing. It's addressing this shortcoming, however, by establishing a marketing budget for the first time. It is undertaking a major revamp of its web site (to be completed this month) and will be participating in legal conferences. Lemyre hints it may also adopt a "freemi- um" marketing model with the company offering a free limited-functionality ver- sion of one or more of its products. Despite the historical weakness in mar- keting, LexUM is now talking to prospec- tive customers and makes a compelling case for its products being different and better than competitors' offerings. "We have a few advantages," says Mokanov. "For one, we really know legal informa- tion. We know how it works. And that is not necessarily the case with the big vendors. Legal is not necessarily their first target market either, and it's our only mar- ket." Bilingualism is another asset, he says. Most projects the lab has worked on were bilingual or multilingual. That capability is built into the products. Mokanov claims one other advantage: "The key in delivering successful search engine solutions is integration. How do you integrate with existing systems? What kinds of interfaces do you need? These things vary from one customer to another, but all require some customization. And we're quite good at that." LexUM will also aim to beat competi- tors on price, which will be 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent lower, says Lemyre. More importantly, prices are for turnkey sys- tems. Most software companies quote a price for licensing and annual mainte- nance. The buyer must engage either the developer or an integrator to install the product. Prices for implementation and integration services are estimates only. If the project runs into problems, the price goes up. LexUM says its prices are for completely installed systems, and will not creep up. "When we explain it, [clients] don't believe it at first. They want to see if there's a catch," says Lemyre. Despite its pedigree and some arguable advantages over competitors, LexUM will have its work cut out to grab market share from bigger, established competitors. It's small — although Lemyre says it will grow to 50 or 60 employees from the current 40 next year — and not well known. Its solu- tions are cloud-based, hosted on LexUM servers, as is CanLII and its other projects. "We think it's a very efficient way of doing things," says Mokanov. "But we do see some resistance from law firms to moving their databases of documents to our serv- ers." No kidding. While he says "all confi- dentiality concerns can be dealt with," law firms may take a fair bit of convincing. Gerry Blackwell is a freelance technology writer based in London, Ont. Read his blog at http://afterbyte.blogspot.com. www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com SEPTEMBER 2010 23 Gadget Watch