August 29, 2006
Fitting Your Law Firm for Case Management
I have seen many different case management solutions. All of them were pretty good. Many law firms have already invested in specialized commercial case management products, yet many have not. Unfortunately, I have seen too many law firms who, after investing significantly in a case management system, never really got it off the ground.
Case management isn’t a piece of software. If you are a practicing lawyer, you are managing your cases. Case management software is just a tool for doing so, but so are file folders and day timers. So is the Microsoft® Office Suite including Outlook® — which, if the truth be told, is the most widely used software by law firms for organizing and managing law firm cases.
The ideal objective is to automate as much of the case activity as one can. That is really what case management is all about—making the process for handling each case as routine, intuitive, and automatic as possible. The more homogenous your practice is, the more likely you are going to be able to accomplish that objective. The more diverse your practice, the tougher it will be to get everyone using the same set of specialized tools.
Trying to fit different specialized practice areas on the same set of case management tools can create inefficiencies rather than efficiency. You always need to keep the objective in mind. The objective is to be able to handle the practice area more efficiently. To that end, you may need different tools for different folks. There is no requirement that everyone use the same case management tool. For example, the litigation group may use a product like Legal Files, while the real estate group goes in a completely different direction, and still others may use Outlook. I should note that Juris is an example of a law firm business system that will connect to multiple case management solutions, including Outlook, even within the same law firm. So it isn’t necessary to give up integration if multiple case management products are appropriate in your particular firm.
In many respects, any tool you use for case management is a blank sheet of paper. To successfully implement case management, you have to be committed to training and investing the resources to set up the system to fit your practice areas. You have to continue to invest to keep your system fine-tuned to those needs. It is not something you just take out of the box and start using. What comes out of the box is just the beginning.
Do you need a case management system? Unquestionably, you do. Do you need a commercial case management system, or are you better off using a combination of general purpose tools to develop your case management solution? That is a better question. It is the objective that is important. The tools you use to get there are less important than just getting there. You need to look at the commercial products related to your particular needs and firm culture. You need to research the existing case management capabilities and limitations of your business software in combination with other software such as document management, file management, Microsoft’s Office Suite, etc. You may not be using the case management tools you already have through the connective capability of your existing software.
The commercial case management system that best fits your firm will vary depending on your size and the character of your law firm. To varying degrees, they include the following functions:
- Client intake information including billing arrangement etc.
- Case information: contacts, counsels, experts, witnesses, facts, dates, issues, strategies, etc.
- Calendaring, docketing, reminders, to-do lists
- Conflict searches
- E-mails and internal documents related to the case
- Discovery documents
- Notes
- Templates of case related information used for document assembly or preparation
Today you have powerful case management tools and comprehensive commercial products to choose from. The tool you use isn’t as important as the effort you put into the task.
When considering the addition of case management software, find out what systems work with your law firm business systems. You want the back office and front office systems working together. If you are a Juris law firm, most of the popular case management systems connect to Juris. Juris also works with Microsoft Outlook. It even expands Outlook’s capabilities for activity tracking and docketing. Many of the commercial case management vendors are members of the Juris Alliance Network as Technology Partners.
Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.
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Filed under Blog by Tom Collins