Sheppard Mullin Selects Contact Networks to Leverage the Firm's Valuable Relationships for Client Development

6 June 2006

LegalTech West Coast 2006 Conference -- Contact Networks (http://www.contactnetworks.com), a leading provider of Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) software for professional services firms, today announced that Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton (http://www.smrh.com), a full-service law firm that ranks 77th in the AmLaw 100, has selected ContactNet 5.0 to help search for, identify, and leverage the firm's valuable relationships to support client development and marketing.

"Developing new clients and cross-selling our services to existing clients are critical to the growth of every firm," said Vickie Spang, Chief Marketing Officer of Sheppard Mullin. "The strong professional relationships that we develop and maintain with our clients and other contacts are a critical foundation for our marketing efforts. We need to be able to immediately uncover who within our firm has a valuable pre-existing relationship and can make an introduction that will increase our ability to grow our business."

Sheppard Mullin has one of the legal industry's best CRM implementations with one of the highest CRM adoption rates among attorneys. ContactNet is a great complement to the firm's CRM investment for two reasons. First, it does not require any manual data entry or upkeep. Relationship data is automatically captured and continues to grow as the firm develops new relationships and hires new attorneys and staff. Second, it uses 37 variables to rank and score colleagues based on their strength of relationship to the target individual or company. Colleagues with the best relationships appear at the top. Sheppard Mullin's attorneys value the advanced privacy configurations, which allow them to remain in complete control of their relationships and decide, case by case, when to make an introduction.

"We realized that ERM would provide our firm with an automated and efficient way to access and leverage all of our relationships without requiring any manual entry or upkeep from our attorneys," said Tom Baldwin, Chief Knowledge Officer at Sheppard Mullin, who is speaking about the firm's use of ERM at the LegalTech West conference today. "We evaluated each of the available ERM solutions on the market, and we chose ContactNet based on five key advantages: comprehensiveness, automation, privacy, security, and experience."

"Law firms, such as Sheppard Mullin, are quickly adopting ERM solutions because they rely heavily on relationships when pursuing new business and cross-selling to existing clients," said Geoffrey Hyatt, Founder and CEO of Contact Networks. "ERM enables professional services firms' to better leverage their own relationship network in a way that is as easy as searching the web."

ContactNet 5.0, Contact Networks' Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) solution, is an enterprise search engine for relationships. It enables professionals to quickly and easily identify which colleagues have the strongest connections to a target individual, company, or industry. ContactNet analyzes multiple data sources including CRM systems, electronic address books, and email traffic patterns, uncovers valuable relationships, and generates a list of colleagues ranked by relationship strength. It requires no manual data entry and is implemented in a couple of weeks. The world's leading firms, including global consulting firms, law firms, and financial services firms, use Contact Networks' proprietary technology every day.

About Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP is a full service AmLaw 100 firm with more than 480 attorneys in nine offices located throughout California and in New York and Washington, D.C. The firm's California offices are located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Century City, Orange County, Del Mar Heights and San Diego. Sheppard Mullin provides legal expertise and counsel to U.S. and international clients in a wide range of practice areas, including Antitrust, Corporate; Entertainment, Media and Communications; Finance and Bankruptcy; Government Contracts; Intellectual Property; Labor and Employment; Litigation; Real Estate/Land Use; Tax/Employee Benefits/Trusts & Estates; and White Collar Defense. The firm was founded in 1927.

About Contact Networks

Contact Networks is the most experienced provider of Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) solutions for professional services firms. Since 2002, the company's ContactNet software has been helping professionals generate more new business by enabling them to leverage their firm's entire extended network of relationships. ContactNet is an automated search tool that immediately identifies colleagues that have the strongest relationships with a valuable prospect. Customers include global consulting firms, law firms and financial services firms such as Mintz Levin, Greylock Partners, Kodiak Venture Partners, and Sagent Advisors. Visit http://www.contactnetworks.com or call 617-305-7961.

Kerry Metzdorf Jakki Glivicky

978-463-2575 617-305-7966

kerry@redjavelin.com jakki.glivicky@contactnetworks.com

Source: prnewswire

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