Ensuring control

There are increasing requirements around money laundering and conflict checking, Professional Indemnity premiums are rising and clients are generally demanding better quality of service at a cost effective price.

To address these issues, many law firms now need a "formalised" method of ensuring checks such as money laundering are completed, that limitation and other key dates are monitored and that regular reviews take place. In addition, there are the "old" problems of clients not being informed where the estimate is exceeded or running up excessively high levels of Working Capital across all the matters on a client.

Combined with this there are productivity opportunities in having the systems automatically generate Client Care and other letters which tend to be very similar (if not identical) for given types of work.

Thus firms want to have a standardised way of initiating matters covering the following (typical) elements:

• Ask if the money laundering and conflict checks have been done
  
  
• Create a client care letter with standard terms and conditions (and ask for and record a revised estimate as often the initial estimate was very rough and only now is it more accurate).
  
  
• Ask for and record any limitation or key dates
  
  
• Automatically schedule a file review for 1 month's time (or 3 month's or …)
  
  Then as the matter progresses they would like the system to pro-actively produce "warnings / reminders" for various situations such as:
  
  
• Time booked is > 75% of estimate (then remind again at 90% and > 100%)
  
  
• Working Capital has exceeded 75%, then 90%, then 100% of credit limit
  
  
• A key date is coming up in 3 months time (then 2 months, then …)
  
  
• Escalation of some of these to the Supervising Partner if the main lawyer does not take action.
  
  Also rather than having a "mechanical" file review every month, perhaps it would be
  better to have a file review only if there has been no activity on the file for some time.
  
  In asb law these areas have started to be addressed. However, there is a massive amount of learning needed here - it is a fundamental change of working practices for some lawyers and thus it has to be approached gently but firmly. Also it has to be done in a manner which is as user friendly as possible. So far the following facilities have been implemented :
  
  
• All new matters go through a "Matter Management" opening template. This varies in different areas from a very basic template (create Client Care Letter) through to full blown Residential Conveyancing.
  
  
• When someone signs in they get personalised "warnings" presented to them. Once investigated, the warnings can be suppressed and then will come back later (there are different rules for different warnings - for example the 75% Estimate warning comes back at 90%, whilst the 100%+ Estimate warning comes back if another £100 goes onto the matter).
  
  
• In some areas, Axxia is being successfully used as a means of recording all the key dates - this makes it easy to look at key dates in different grouping - for example by Supervising Partner, date in the next x months, by Matter or by Client.
  
  In addition to these "Case / Matter Management" facilities, there is also a strong need to make it easy for Lawyers to gain access to their data - they need to be able to see all the matters where they have high WIP or where a key date is coming up or where the Unpaid Bills are overdue or … Without quick and easy access to this type of information Lawyers cannot control the matters under their charge. (How many matters do you have on file where there has been no activity for many months, the unpaid bills, and WIP balance is zero and yet the matter is not closed because the lawyer has "forgotten about it".)
  
  Key to the development of this area in asb law is the provision of Intranet based facilities to allow easy access and enquiry direct into Axxia on areas such as:
  
  
• All Activities for a person (including future activities)
  
  
• All the Matters, by Lawyer responsible or by Supervising Partner, or by Client Partner, or by Client or by …
  
  
• Sorting lists by WIP, or date of last activity.
  
  However, all of this is not simple. It takes time to establish what is really helpful. One has to start with very simple systems and then make them more sophisticated only as lawyers understand how they can help. It is far too easy to simply introduce an "administrative burden". The systems need to "grow" with the understanding of the lawyers - thus it is not simply a matter of implementing it and then moving on - the systems need review and upgrade - after nearly one year of running the new systems inside asb law everyone's understanding has grown massively and areas are ready for levels of automation they had no chance of handling at the start.