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GAZETTE
DECEMBER 1989
Law Tech 89
The first combined exhibition of
technology for accountants,
solicitors and barristers was a clear
success. It was a great benefit to
suppliers of general office equip-
ment who catered for both pro-
fessions.
Ann Hegarty of Cantec
found the greatest interest was in
their heat binders: no doubt a side
effect of the productivity of laser
printers, which enables those WP
precedents to get even longer -
defeating the strongest of staplers
and the most determined of secre-
taries aided with hammers. It had
been rumoured that some firms had
gone to Plan Expo downstairs look-
ing for Hilti guns and Black &
Deckers to help solve their binding
problems.
Cant ec 's
Petar
McPartland
found that business
was very good this year after being
dissappointing last year. There is a
new trend in office design. To
maximise space, desks are built in
units on the walls, especially in
corners where computer terminals
dictating machines etc. are all fitted
tidily in place with no exposed
wiring. The centre of the room is
reserved for a conference table. To
fit in with this
Peter Hynes
of
DEVTECH
has space saving multi-
purpose Storage cabinets which
can line the walls, They are beauti-
fully designed - a far cry from the
gun grey metal of the steel deeds
cabinets of old. The more
equipment a firm purchases the
higher the overheads go. Turning to
the recent spate of investment in
Fax machines and Laser printers
Equitrac Corporation
was there to
show you how to record painlessly
their use as Client disbursements.
Both
Martin Sawyer of Sabre
Business Systems Ltd.
and
Patrick Shaw
of
Castletown
Press pic
felt that last year's
exhibition was great and this year
was quiet enough. They had a great
year last year with the installation
of Cobra Legal accounting systems
into many firms. Last year for a multi
user system one had to buy an
Alpha mini-computer: this year they
had it running on a PC(286)
installed with a special card with a
MB of memory.
Patrick Shaw
had
a very reasonably priced PC with a
removeable 44MB hard disk. The
disk cost £250.
Rick Deegan
of
BCL
was another convert to PCs
and Unic/Xenis. His accounts
system will run on Wang VS, PCs
and Unix/Xenis. His Case manage-
ment system (the first in Ireland) will
run on a PC as well as Wang, and
his Debt Collection system (used by
one of the biggest financial institu-
tions in Ireland) will also run on a
PC. All his systems will shortly be
running on Unix. This is the year
that the PC has come of age for the
legal profession with Unix pushing
very hard for a place in the sun.
There was some great value in
hardware.
David Kelly
of
Softech
Computers Ltd.
had IBM Model 30
286 computers with a 20 MB Hard
Disk reduced from £2,829 to
£2,100. He had a twin bin Brother
Laser Printer that printed on both
sides of the paper reduced from
£3,500 to £2,800. It had a very
large selection of fonts, maybe not
as many as the Kyocera but a much
better choice with Pica and Elite
being replaced by a better looking
Brougham 12 and 10 point. As well
as a 10 point Times Roman (the
largest on the Kyocera) there was a
12.5 point Anelia proportional
spacing which looked terrific. Like
the Kyocera they had six printer emu-
lations. They also has a single bin
single sided Brother Laser reduced
from £2,200 to £1,750.
Sharptext
had the new Kyocera 2200S with
postscript for desktop publishing.
Kyocera certainly led the way with
speed and the number and quality
of fonts. However, they should not
rest on their laurels too long, and
must address their market weak-
nesses such as cost, particularly the
drum kits.
Seamus Murray
of
Business Electronic Equipment
had great value in a Hyundai 286
PC and a Ricoh PC6000 Laser
Printer for under £3,000. He also
demonstrated the excellent Q&A
Word Processor and Database.
Michael McKeown
of
Tomorrow's
World
primarly dealt with account-
ants but had some very price com-
petitive equipment from Olivetti, as
well as the Mac which has the best
user interface in the world.
Seamus
Brennan
of
Office Automation
demonstrated an Alcatel photo-
copier with reduction and four
colours at a very competitive price.
One piece of software of interest
to both solicitors and accountants
was The Company Secretary from
Datacare.
It could print annual
returns, notices of change of
registered office and change of
Directors and Secretary. Modules
could be added for minutes and
maintaining the statutory register.
Frank Lanigan
of
Star,
the great
believer in UNIX, had his multi-user
system running on Convergent
Technology 68030. The accounts
package SOLPAK has been com-
pletely re-written and updated in the
past year. He too has been looking
at PCs. and has opted for IBM run-
ning AIX (their version of UNIX). His
systems professional
Norman Hull,
who represents Ireland and is
Chairman of the European Unix
User Group, apart from answering
any possible question I could put to
him, demonstrated the incredible
speed of AIX on the 25 MHz IBM
70. The major problem with Unix,
namely that of speed, appears to
have been addressed.
Bernard
Donnelly
of
Orchard,
fully re-
covered after his recent illness,
bounced into his stand (the largest
at the show) in casual wear -
welcome relief in a sea of suits. His
sales director
Mark O'Dwyer
and
newly recruited
Martin Roper
had
convened large numbers of
accountants and solicitors to
sample their wares (a simple task
for Martin after his years at the
Oak). JUSTAX, their accounts
system, will run on a PC and on a
network system. Barristers were
catered for by
Legal & General
as
well as by BAR-MASTER from
Pascal Software Ltd. Reliance
Business Systems Ltd.
had a very
sophisticated cheque writing sys-
tem, and Kalamazoo-Alluset Busi-
ness Systems will ensure that you
have a proper manual system, a vital
necessity before one can computer-
ise. Computers are marvellous for
accounts, WP, indexes and data-
bases but legal text is still best held
in Book Form.
Butterworths,
as well
as demonstrating Itelis for the latest
judgments, had their excellent latest
publication White on Irish Law on Dam-
ages for Personal Injuries and Death.
There were more than 50 stands
at the exhibition and I didn't have
time to visit them all. There was a
great range of equipment, and
nothing that I saw was irrelevant.
The stand executives were extremely
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