System for small legal firms

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 28

System for small legal firms

A well-known legal accounting system which had its origins in Christchurch has been converted to a microcomputer and is now expected to be within the reach of many of New Zealand’s smaller legal practices.

The first Christchurch installation of the new version of the BHL Legal Accounting System is expected within a month.

Two New Zealanders, Mr Leonard Bryson-Haynes and Dr Herman Lange, started designing legal computer systems more than six years ago in Christchurch. The product that eventuated is the BHL Legal Accounting System, named after their initials. About 40 law firms in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa use the systems on Wang minicomputers. Costing from $35,000 upwards, these systems are mainly installed in large firms, including companies' such as Bell Gully and Company, in Wellington, Marshall Cordner and Company, in Christchurch, and Raymond i Sullivan Cooney and McGlashan, in Timaru.

Mr Bryson-Haynes and Dr Lange are now based in Sydney, but Mr BrysonHaynes was back in Christchurch before Christmas to demonstrate his company’s latest product — the BHL Legal Accounting System converted onto the IBM Personal Computer. Now for a price of under $30,000 lawyers can purchase a complete computer system that will provide trust, disbursement and debit accounting, investment management, mortgage management, time and fees accounting, credit control, label printing and mortgagee payments. A time-cost module allows fee earners to record both chargeable and nonchargable time.

The BHL system also can interface with a word-pro-cessing package, satisfying another need of law firms. Large firms using the Wang-based system have found that the computer’s management of their books have saved them enough to pay for the system in less than a year. By bringing the package down to a microcomputer, Mr Bryson-Haynes believes it is now feasible for even two-man law firms to justify their own computer system, when the savings from a having a wordprocessing facility are also taken into consideration.

It was the advent of the IBM Personal Computer, says Mr Bryson-Haynes, that enabled his company to bring the software down from the larger computers to the microcomputer. “The technology has only just got to that stage,” he says. It is expected that most

systems will be sold on the XT version of the Personal Computer, with a 10-mega-byte hard disc. The practical minimum is a fivemegabyte disc, according to Mr Bryson-Haynes. A demonstration of the package shows little evidence that there have been compromises to get the software on to a microcomputer. A user can view all ledgers on one matter (that is trust, disbursements, debtors and work in progress) through the screen. Plenty of room has been allocated for descriptive fields — a feature found essential from surveys of users of the large systems. The system lets the user have complete, random access to information by partner, author, or matter, with date options. Three levels of security are built-in, through password protection, so that only certain staff can access specific information.

It took a year to convert the Wang-based package to the IBM Personal Computer, involving about two man-years work, according to Mr Bryson-Haynes. The original package itself involved about four manyears of development Mr lan Bayly, office manager of Raymond Sullivan Cooney and McGlashan, came from Timaru to see the IBM Personal Computer version of the software demonstrated.

His firm chose the Wang system running the BHL software 2% years ago, after a long period observing the market. “We are very impressed with the philosophy, it has got to be the best system there is,” Mr Bayly says.

“We are able to adapt it to any situation. We have never had to say ‘We can’t do that because the computer won’t let us‘.”

A Christchurch company, Computer Information Services, Ltd, is the major South Island agent for the BHL Legal Accounting System on the IBM Personal Computer. Its marketing manager, Mr Ken Mortimer, describes the package as the Rolls-Royce of legal packages. “In a market survey we found that the BHL system was best,” says Mr Mortimer. “It did not impose on the legal practice a set way of doing things.”