Pictured above: Twiggy (Trent FM), Bethan Davies (Freeth Cartwright), Steve Mason (judge), Peter Smith (Freeth Cartwright), Steffan La Touche (Trent FM)

Shortlisted for 3 awards, Derby law firm Freeth Cartwright helped put the spotlight on the East Midlands after being the only law firm in the UK outside London to be shortlisted to win the accolade of the "Best Use of Technology" category in the recent British Legal Awards 2010.  

The firm's IT Applications Team were shortlisted alongside some pretty big hitters such as Clifford Chance; Linklaters; Hogan Lovells; Berwin Leighton Paisner and Field Fisher Waterhouse and were only just piped at the post by Clifford Chance.

Winning awards isn't new for the Freeth Cartwright team. Their first win, Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce's Nottinghamshire's Best Business Awards 2010 award, Innovation through Technology, was announced at a recent gala dinner at Colwick Hall Hotel.  

They then came in runner up, Highly Commended, in The Law Society's Excellence Awards 2010 - Excellence in Innovation category.  

Mike Taplin, managing partner at Freeth Cartwright's Derby office said: "We are delighted to be shortlisted once more alongside other major law firms.  Our overriding objective is to provide a quality legal service to our clients, and we constantly review how best to do that and this award recognises this.  We have a high calibre of lawyers and our task is to make it as easy as possible for those lawyers to work day to day."  

Bethan Davies, head of the Applications Development Team, added: "We recognise that to improve efficiency, lawyers need as much information as possible, including their files, at their fingertips.  Our in-house development team therefore designed, created and implemented "Case Viewer", a comprehensive electronic working environment for lawyers.  Case Viewer means that we can store information quickly and recall it instantly and it also enables our clients to access their own file information 24/7 via our extranet."