Pricing for the two applications starts at US$65,000, with a typical implementation running between US$300,000 and US$400,000, he said. Details of the Morrison & Foerster contract were not disclosed.

The search software is expected to save the law firm US$4 million annually, according to Benamram.

Parisa Jorjani, a Morrison & Foerster attorney in San Francisco, said she was so busy last spring when AnswerBase was rolled out internally that she missed the 10-minute training demo. Then one night in July, while working late in her office, she got a phone call from someone in the firm's Tokyo office requesting case information immediately. Remembering earlier memos about AnswerBase, Jorjani watched the five-minute training video and used the software to find the information she needed in a few minutes.

"It cut the time by tenfold, so I was able to find the answer quickly," she said. "Someone else had done the exact same research and answered the exact same question" earlier, making it even easier to use AnswerBase.

Timothy Harris, another Morrison & Foerster attorney, said the new system is a huge improvement over the old one because it saves so much time over having to connect with the other offices. AnswerBase now serves as a bridge to more efficiently connect the law firm's 19 locations, he said. The applications even allow it to see and search what every attorney is working on with a description of every transaction.

"It provides us with incredible transparency into what our lawyers are doing," Harris said.