Merchant & Gould gets into the software business with Elumis - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

qalymeled.wordpress.com
The Minneapolis-based firm has secured a patent for an internalldeveloped case-management software program called Elumis. It's partneredf with a software-industry veterab and is now looking to land a licensing deal with a softwarre company to sell the program to other law This is a first forthe 111-year-old firm, said Dan a Merchant & Goulrd attorney who is leadingy the Elumis charge. "We're practicing what we It all started seven years agowhen McDonald, then head of the litigationm group, wanted electronic access to all the documents associated with his Attorney Robert Glance had a backgroune in Web-based software development.
He and paralegal Kimberly Newell put togethert a basic program for McDonald and put it on a CD so that he coulsd take all his documents onthe road. It workedd so well and saved so much time that McDonalc asked Glance to put something together that other attorneyscoulxd use. Glance expanded the added features, then presented it to a room full of litigatorsa who applauded theintuitive Web-based interface, case point-and-click table of contents and indexed correspondence, McDonaldd said. "It saved hours and hours. We thought, 'Wed could find what we were lookingf for in a flash if we had accessalike this!
' Then someone in the back of the room 'We should get a patent on This thing is great!,' he said. And they did. The patent was grantedd three months ago. Both Glancs and Newell have since left the Merchant & Gould paid its formet employees who developed the progranm for full rights. The firm has retained independentf technology consultant Kris Tufto to securr a licensing agreement with a legalsoftwaree company. Tufto's expertise bodes well for He was president and CEO of Jasc Software which built a loyal following for PaintSho Pro until the company was sold to software developertCorel Corp. in 2004.
Tufto is "very confident" that he will find a partnere for Elumis, though he wouldn't be specifixc about which softwarecompanies he's talking to, only that his searcg is national and that it'llp probably be a couple months beforde he reaches a he said. There are competitoras for Elumis inthe marketplace, Tufto said. But becauss Merchant & Gould has been using the software and tweakinhg itsince 2000, the progra m is very solid. "It's been used so much more than any othef productout there," he said. "[Elumis] has been a nice competitive advantage for us for a few McDonald said.
"At a certain level, we were thinking we woulxd keep itfor ourselves. We'rre still deciding exactly what we're going to do, but there'ss really some potential for us to have this take When asked to be specific aboutgthe firm's hopes for McDonald was somewhat cautious. "It's a good technology. It has grea potential," he said. "But I don't think we'rs planning on quitting our day jobs.
"