When lawyers compose legal documents or gather copies of court cases and other transcripts, they generate paper — almost countless sheets of the stuff.
Simon Aleman, president of
iDea Mill Technologies Inc.,
experienced the piles firsthand
while working for a litigation
support group. When
he decided to open a software
company, taming the mess
was the goal of his first product,
Breeze.
“A lot of the time, the turnaround
for litigation support
takes a day or two,” he said.
“With Breeze, the firm can do
all the sorting themselves.”
Aleman said his Tulsa company
finished Breeze just two
months ago but already has
sold it to 50 law firms across
the nation. At $850 a copy, he
said, the price is low for such
specialized software.
At its core, Breeze is a sorting
program. When physical
documents are scanned in,
Breeze sorts them and
stamps them with page numbers
and notes, such as “confidential.”
Breeze also uses
optical character recognition
to transform image files into
text files and vice versa.
When finished, the information
can be stored digitally,
rather than in filing cabinets.
To persuade law firms to
use Breeze for performing
tasks that formerly were outsourced,
Aleman said he
made the interface as simple
as possible.
“Any paralegal, secretary
or lawyer can figure out how
to use it in five minutes,” he
said.
Aleman hopes Breeze will
help his company grow from
six people to 15 by the end of
the year. He’s also looking for
investors to raise the
$100,000 in required matching
funds for a grant that
Breeze recently obtained
from the Technology Business
Finance Program at the
Oklahoma Center for the Advancement
of Science and
Technology.
Aleman said he’s not aware
of a similar product on the
market, though he expects
that competition will surface
soon.
“We know we have to establish
the market quickly and
become the Brand A,” he
said.
© Copyright 2009, Robert Evatt The Tulsa World
Posted on Sat, January 17, 2009
by Robert Evatt