News: Virtual Data Room Enhancements for Large Projects

Jan 21, 2010 - by Joel Lessem

At Firmex we are proud to announce significant enhancements on our virtual data room technology platform. The following is an extract of the press release made public today:

Firmex has released a new architecture that exponentially increases the speed in which users can review large volumes of documents.   “Since we do not charge for data or documents stored, our clients have increasingly been using Firmex for very large transactions. These transactions can run 10,000 to 100,000 document folders, each containing sets of documents”.

While this is not common on your average M&A transaction, if you’re restructuring asset-backed loan portfolios, running a multi-billion deal,  sharing clinical study findings, or reviewing litigation documents, sharing large volumes of documents is not uncommon” says Randy Rosenberg, Firmex CTO. With this highly efficient technology, Firmex can accommodate our increasing roster of large projects. “Our policy of unlimited use and cost certainty for our clients forces us to develop high-speed and efficient technology.  The combination of drag & drop functionality and the ability to move thousands of documents rapidly to and from the data room and the speed enhancements for large transactions saves our clients considerable time and money when managing transactions.  They are all aligned with our focus on speed and ease-of-use as key development objectives” says Rosenberg.

You can go here to see the full press release.

Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto

Jul 8, 2010 - by John Gillies

In The Checklist Manifesto, Dr. Atul Gawande examines how the use of checklists can significantly improve workflows and outcomes in the work environment. He focuses primarily on the aviation and construction industries, and analyzes where and how checklists are used. He speaks as well about his experience in a WHO-sponsored initiative bringing checklists to surgical operating theatres around the world. There are, I believe, possible applications of his ideas within a law firm.

[Dr. Gawande is a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and leads the World Health Organization’s Safe Surgery Saves Lives program. He is also the author of two other books, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance and Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science", and is a staff writer for The New Yorker. The genesis for his book was an article on checklists in The New Yorker in December 2007].

Dr. Gawande examines in some detail the genesis of checklists in the aviation industry, a major result of which is the incredible safety record that the industry enjoys, despite the obvious complexity involved in any flight.