South Africa’s leading knowledge provision company, LexisNexis (www.lexisnexis.com), in partnership with Law Credit, today announced that the Cape Town High Court will be equipped with Wi-Fi internet connectivity. The Wi-Fi installation will allow everyone visiting the court to access the internet via a wireless connection and legal professionals will be able to connect to their subscribed research platforms free of charge.
All legal professionals and visitors in possession of a device with wireless connectivity features, such as laptops, tablet devices and cellular telephones, will be able to make use of the Wi-Fi facility to access any internet site by purchasing data bundles using their credit cards. Step by step instructional material will be visible throughout the corridors of the court and will explain how users can connect to the internet through their wireless devices.
Above: Billy Last (CEO – LexisNexis South Africa and Lindile Kolosa Cape High Court Manager
The Wi-Fi facility provides significant benefit to particularly legal professionals as they will be able to access their My LexisNexis accounts, an online research platform for the legal industry, to access statutes and law reports and to conduct further research directly from the court building without needing a 3G network or a mobile device.
An international workplace productivity survey conducted by LexisNexis in June and July 2010 found that 90 percent of legal professionals in South Africa said that not being able to access the right information at the right time wasted their time and impeded their productivity.
The survey also found that the majority of legal professionals in South Africa, 70 percent, reported that research takes up so much of their time that sometimes they end up not billing for the time they’ve spent on it.
This is exactly why LexisNexis is continuously transforming itself to, not only keep abreast with the changes in technology, but to assist professionals with their changing needs and to help them access and manage information more effectively.
LexisNexis and Law Credit ran a pilot project at the Durban High Court earlier this year and thus far the wireless facility has been received with great enthusiasm. “We have seen significant usage of our online research products via this network which is a good indication that our subscribers are making good use of this service,” says Raffael Beires, Business Developer at LexisNexis.
“The idea behind providing the Wi-Fi facility is to develop the legal industry as a whole and to assist our customers to work more efficiently and effectively. The stakeholders at the Cape High Court have, from the inception of this project, understood the great benefits of having such a service at the court. They gave us the necessary permission to provide this service and we are already working with the Department of Justice to provide this facility in all courts across the country,” says Beires.
It is LexisNexis’s intention to roll out the service to all the High Courts in South Africa and the company is actively working with key partners to add further value through this facility by investigating additional solutions to offer its customers.
Anyone wishing to find out more about the company’s 24 product offerings may contact LexisNexis on 0860 765 432.
About LexisNexis
LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. LexisNexis originally pioneered online information with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in more than 100 countries with 15,000 employees worldwide. In South Africa, LexisNexis is 50% owned by Reed Elsevier and 50% owned by Kagiso Media, a leading empowerment group.
