Biblio

LEAP – major new expansion initiative into the United States

LEAP Legal Software, the UK’s leading provider of cloud legal software and automated forms and precedents to small and medium sized law firms, has announced a major new expansion initiative into the United States. LEAP has more than 2,000 firms and 12,000 users using its software in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

PCLaw | Time Matters is a new joint venture operated by LEAP Legal Software, the world’s leading provider of cloud-based legal software to small and medium-sized law firms, and LexisNexis Legal & Professional, part of RELX and a leading global provider of information and analytics.

The new company has taken over the extensive customer list of firms that use PCLaw and Time Matters in in the United States, Canada and Australasia.

According to Richard Hugo-Hamman, Executive Chairman of LEAP and now also of PCLaw | Time Matters LLC, “We are first and foremost a legal software company. It is all that we do. We focus all our efforts on providing the highest standards of customer support, and the most innovative and useful software for lawyers and support staff. We help our clients to build great law firms.

We believe that profitable and healthy law firms that ‘help people like us’ in the common areas of law such as family law, real estate, immigration, probate and the like are good for our communities. Surprisingly many small law firms don’t do well financially. It is our job to give them the tools to do more work with the same number of people and grow the profits of their firms. Our global success has been built on delivering on this promise.

We will immediately start improving the customer support experience for PC Law and Time Matters users with the introduction of our state-of-the-art online support experience built on the Salesforce technology stack that LEAP has used for more than a decade. We are also very aware that the crucially important Certified Independent Consultant (CIC) network is ready for a more focussed and active program to help them better serve their clients. They play a crucially important advisory role to many law firms, and we will make sure that they have all the information they need to provide good informed advice and to help them build their businesses. We think that a strong CIC network, well supported by the JV, will be good for our thousands of customers.

A review

By Joe Goodwin, Business Development Manager At Currency Index. 13 Aug 2019.

Joe Goodwin explains how considering the impact of exchange rates and the foreign exchange sector can benefit practitioners and their beneficiaries.

Globalisation has meant that it is now increasingly likely that beneficiaries of estates reside overseas or that estates often contain overseas assets or shares – the deceased may have owned a holiday home in France for example that will need to be sold and the proceeds repatriated to the UK.

Taking French property as an example, once the French property is sold the practitioner dealing with the administration of the estate will arrange for the Euros to be repatriated back to the firm’s UK client account to be distributed accordingly.

One element in this process that is often overlooked when the euros are transferred from the French solicitors account and converted into GBP, is the exchange rate at which banks convert the currency. It’s not always obvious that banks make large profits on foreign exchange but the key consideration for practitioners is the large margin between the buy and sell rate.

There is a way to avoid these large fees – if a currency specialist is used to convert the Euros to GBP instead of the banks, beneficiaries can gain up to 4% more of the amount transferred. This doesn’t sound like much, but on a transaction of €300K, the beneficiary gains up to €12K extra.

The same logic applies for larger amounts and for currency transfers going out of the UK as well as coming in to the UK.

Case Study – November 2018

The beneficiary of an estate resides in England and is due to inherit a large sum of €1.66M following the sale of a Spanish property.

By using Currency Index to convert the currency instead of the bank high street bank, the beneficiary is over £36K better off, (which is enough to cover administration fees)!

Process

The process is straightforward; the Spanish Lawyer transfers the euros to Currency Index’s euro account, Currency Index convert the funds as above and transfer to the UK solicitor’s GBP client account. Same-day transfer and no transfer fees.

Security of funds

To ensure that client funds are safe and secure, Currency Index operate with segregated client accounts, are regulated by the FCA as an authorised payment institute and regulated by HMRC.

Currency Index specialise in working with Law firms to ensure that international currency transfers are made in the best interest of the client. Transfer processes are simple and straightforward and can be implemented without adding complexity to current systems.

Joe Goodwin is Business Development Manager at Currency Index.

Joe.goodwin@currencyindex.co.uk

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