LEGAL software provider Insight Legal has launched a Scottish base months after expanding into the Northern Irish market.

The six-year old Hampshire-based firm, which has opened an office on Glasgow’s St Vincent Street, is looking to create three jobs north of the Border, with that number likely to expand as it signs up more clients.

Insight Legal’s software focuses on legal accounting, practice management and case management, and it has developed a version that is tailored o the Scottish marketplace.

“The Law Society of Scotland has some quite different rules on how you handle client money that the Law Society of England and Wales,” said Insight Legal technical director Tim Smith.

“The software has to be pretty different to cater for that.

“When we developed our software we knew we would be moving into Scotland and we have recently filled in all the gaps so it handles Scottish stuff too.”

The Scottish base is being led by director of operations Brian Welsh, who has worked at the firm’s Farnborough base for the past five years. 

Mr Welsh said the business would look to develop its Scottish offering based on the requirements of customers in the local market.

“The needs of our customers will be influential in the development of the Scottish product and we are building a local team to provide training and support,” he said.

Mr Smith said that Mr Welsh would be joined by “a support person, at least one trainer and an admin person”.

“Because clients will be on monthly contracts, the more firms we take on the more staff we’ll be able to take on,” he added.

The firm has already signed up a Saltcoats-based practice, with Mr Smith saying that it is likely to be firms at the smaller end of the market that will be interested in the software.

“We’ve traditionally focused on the bottom end of the market, but that’s about 90 per cent of the market,” he said.

“These are firms that have typically not been well served by software suppliers, which tend to go for the really high end.

“We like to target small and medium sized businesses.”

Mr Smith said that Insight Legal, whose software is currently used by around 500 law firms based across England and Wales, typically signs up four new clients every week.

As the Scottish legal market is considerably smaller, however, he said he expects the rate at which it can build its client base here to be slower.

“Scotland is not as big as England and Wales so we won’t manage that sort of level,” Mr Smith said.

“We would hope to be doing one or two a week by this time next year.”