2004 Press Releases

Objective assists Australian Government Solicitor maintain competitive advantage in legal industry

Objective Corporation (ASX:OCL) today announced that Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) has selected its electronic document and records management solution (EDRMS) to improve services to its clients and enhance competitive advantage.

AGS is a legal firm, owned by the federal government, that is dedicated to providing legal services to Government, Portfolio Ministers, Commonwealth Departments, Commonwealth agencies and business enterprises.

AGS is one of Australia's largest national law firms with offices in every capital city and 750 staff, approximately half of whom are lawyers. AGS operates as a commercial entity, generating revenue necessary to support its business and competing with private sector law firms for the Australian Government's legal business.

As with all legal practices, AGS' operations, are extremely information intensive. Improving information management is seen as crucial to sustaining operational excellence. AGS sought a solution that would deliver a number of outcomes:

	Ensure consistency of advice provided to clients, regardless of their location, resulting in an overall improvement in quality of service.
	Enhance service to clients by maximising efficiency in document authoring, collaboration, capture and access.
	Grow the business and enhance competitive advantage.

Following an open tender and extensive evaluation process, AGS selected an EDRMS from Objective, considering it best able to meet its requirements.

Noela L'Estrange, Director, Legal Practice Support, AGS said: "The project has far-reaching implications for the way work is done at AGS, it will be a core business system used by all lawyers and support staff across Australia. The solution needed to fit with our existing technology innovations which are designed to deliver effective client outcomes.

"The chosen solution needed to offer the flexibility to integrate with all of our business processes, and provide functionality to deliver improved business outcomes. It also needed to be user-friendly and easy to learn in order to be readily accepted by all of our staff," said Ms L'Estrange.

All AGS staff will use the EDRMS, which will underpin their daily work. It will be the point of access for searching for any relevant existing information and precedents. It will be the repository for storing all electronic documents and will also manage and track physical information.

"One of the greatest benefits to our practice will come from the improvements to collaborative working. Our business spans the whole country. Lawyers, located in different cities, often work on the same matter, and will use the EDRMS as a central point of collaboration. This will simplify document authoring, both within teams of lawyers, and also with clients, regardless of their location.

"The EDRMS will underpin AGS' knowledge management strategy, enabling its lawyers and support staff to leverage professional information resources, share professional knowledge, and deliver benefits to our clients," said Ms L'Estrange.

Mr Tony Walls, CEO Asia Pacific, Objective Corporation said: "AGS are the leading lawyers to government, and their exhaustive evaluation process demonstrates Objective's capability to deliver innovative solutions to the legal industry, in terms of both functionality to support the advanced business processes of leading legal firms and usability for non-technical, knowledge workers.

"This, together with Objective's proven track-record operating in high-volume, geographically dispersed environments, makes Objective a logical choice for legal firms seeking to leverage document and knowledge management for competitive advantage.

"The benefits of our direct business model continue to be reinforced by the market. Objective's partnership approach of working closely with our customers and taking responsibility for successful implementation, change management, training and ongoing support of the solution was viewed favourably by the evaluation team at AGS," said Mr Walls.

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About Australian Government Solicitor

AGS is the leading provider of legal and related services for Australian Government departments and agencies. It is also one of Australia's largest national law firms with more than 360 lawyers, and offices in every capital city. AGS has been providing legal services to government for 100 years, and became a government business enterprise in 1999.

AGS is an independent, fully commercial and competitive law firm. It acts for departments and agencies, and entities in which the Australian Government has an interest, domestically and internationally. It also acts for state and territory government organisations at their request.

The shareholder ministers are the Attorney-General and the Minister for Finance and Administration. As a government business enterprise, it is subject to the reporting and accountability requirements of the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997.