Now you're scanning with... well, with what?

August 27, 2007 2:57 PM

What software might a large Canadian IP and tech law firm use for scanning documents and records management?

I'm interviewing for a position with a large Canadian law firm that specializes in intellecual property and technology law.

I have some background in scanning with various software packages, and was hoping to explore some of the more popular legal records management solutions to get my feet wet (or at least to be famillair with vendor names and their product offerings).

Googling turns up a ton of plausible hits, but it's hard to get an authoritative sense for which software actually has decent market penetration. Is there anything approaching an industry standard -- i.e. is there anything with the sector-specific dominance of a Photoshop or an AutoCAD?

posted by onshi to computers & internet (5 answers total)

I'm not sure how much Canada figures into the equation, but the two big players I know of are Summation and Concordance.
posted by bryanjbusch at 3:02 PM on August 27, 2007

Disclaimer: I AM affiliated.

Ringtail has decent penetration in the large-scale litigation market.

Not an endorsement, your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, etc. :)
posted by Brak at 5:45 PM on August 27, 2007

Introspect also competes significantly with all of the above products. And it is not uncommon, in my experience, for one firm to use more than one of these products.

There are also companies that offer similar products as hosted services, such as Daticon, which I think used to be DolphinSearch.

Not relevant for your interview, but I've used Summation, Introspect, and Dolphin/Daticon. They all suck. My colleagues say the same about Concordance. Even if they are the most powerful tool in the world during the demo, they will all suck for the lawyers using them at some point when you are supporting a case (I assume from the question, you are aplying for a litigation support or IT position of some sort. if not, ignore the last part).
posted by jewishbuddha at 7:09 PM on August 27, 2007

The two I have used are Ringtail (which blows, sorry Brak), and Applied Discovery, which Lexis bought a while ago, and which is pretty good.
posted by raf at 7:23 PM on August 27, 2007

Yes, this is for a support position.

jb: I know what you mean. I think most sector-specific software is like this. I've never heard anyone in the library industry speak very highly of their Integrated Library System no matter which vendor they dance with.
posted by onshi at 7:31 PM on August 27, 2007