The Initial Meeting

This visit will be an initial ‘fact finding’ meeting where we will see where there can be efficiency gains and improved working practices and procedures put into place.  We then need to identify areas where you, as a firm, can move forward and this would be in the following areas:

• Making use of the existing system and delivering efficiency savings for the practice
• Manage the cultural changes required to change perceptions of the system, so that it can be seen as a benefit to the daily working lives of support staff and fee earners
• Consider a rolling programme of development for the staff
• Consider and identify areas where more focus may be required
• Consider future enhancements to the system, possible implementation of workflow
• Integrate Lexcel/Compliance and initial terms of business letters etc. within the precedent bank.
• Incorporate ‘early warning systems’ for escalating matters for partner and compliance officer review, in order to handle complaints and compliance issues
• Identify key areas of work within the areas identified below.

Areas to be considered – After the initial visit

We provide an overview below of the areas we propose to cover .  There is also though the possibility that you might want us to cover off specific work and also do some follow-up site visits to work as an extended ‘arm’ to your existing IT support.

The initial visit will allow us to spend time seeing how people actually work and then think about how best such working procedures can be captured within the case management system.  It is critical to the delivery of a suitable system and the cultural ‘buy-in’ that, as much as possible, the system reflects your firm’s working practices and current/desired procedures.

There may be a further exercise around a centralised diary management through ALB.  We explore the enhanced use of tasks and categorising of such tasks, which provides both an audit trail of specific activities against specific matters and also reduces the use of email internally.

Your firm may be looking at the use of ALB for managing email and activities from an administrative view.  We can of course discuss this during the visit.

Areas to be considered going forward and to be initially reviewed:

• CRM – Database Management, the power of the database –
  • Looking at clients, contacts, service organisations and service contacts
  • managing business critical information within a law firm – one time only data entry – explaining how it works and why it works in such a way
  • One database to capture all relevant information, creating user defined fields for specific work types
  • Think about how your firm currently captures contact information, what do you do with it?
  • Contacts – anyone connected to a transaction, but is not instructing the firm (at this stage – may do in the future)
  • Service Organisations: capture key information on third parties including estate agents, otherside solicitors, lenders, court information, probate registry, local authority, funeral directors etc – all key organisations with which your firm interacts
  • Use and importance of Service Contacts (they are the individuals within the organisations with whom you deal) they will have specific direct contact details which help you to manage information sent through to them centrally (managing documents, letters, forms, emails etc.), reducing administrative costs and speeding up responses.
  • Provide training for support staff to gain an understanding and greater familiarity with the database CRM and opening up and loading in contacts, clients etc. within the CRM
• Matter Management, bringing the right information together –
  • How to properly load in clients, contacts, service organisations and service contacts into matters
  • Provide training for support staff to gain an understanding and greater familiarity with the database and opening up and loading in contacts, clients etc. within a matter
  • Specifically tailoring matters to reflect the working procedures within the firm to include:
    • Identifying all connected parties and their role
    • Customise agendas to reflect documents and milestones within a matter
    • Show how to properly file documents, file opening forms, file review forms, letters, emails, otherside correspondence etc.
    • Build in compliance
    • Look at who does what, why and when – working in the most efficient way
  • Look at agenda and workflow
    • Identify areas more suitable for agenda style of workflow (passive)
    • Identify areas more suitable for workflow style (prescribed)
    • Identify how FEs best wish to utilise the system
    • Help to train and design agenda for different worktypes
• Document Management System  –
  • The importance of centrally managed document precedent bank,
  • how precedents are organised,
  • Build in specific and show how to manage template types peculiar to your practice and according to application types and modify them for your firm
  • Ease of navigation for support staff and FEs
  • Create specific folders for worktypes within matters for ease of finding documents and filing.
  • Create and manage metadata for precedents, making sure documents are properly filed within the precedent bank
  • Actively manage the matter and the file
  • Create and train users to properly map reference links with laserforms and word documents, including the use of supplemental data
• Effective capture of enquiries –  Build a quotation system through contacts
  • Building on the database – management and generation of quotes
  • Possible use of ‘Enquiries’ as a client and matters as specific work types
  • Document can be emailed out to the contact (prospective client)
  • Follow up can be set to ‘chase’ the quote and convert the lead
  • Modify your templates to reflect both the different work types for which you are quoting and also the style and prices etc. within your practice
  • Be quick off the mark – Win more business for your firm
  • Avoid the embarrassment of quoting for work, for which you may in fact have a conflict of interest
  • Show ‘Quote Type’, use of list items to pick out
  • Show how to use filtering within the search feature for effective capture of information back out of the system
  • Easy to upgrade contacts into clients, helps you track what work they were involved with before, raises the opportunity to more easily cross sell
• More advanced features –  Building a customised system
  • Use and training for supplemental data fields to capture data relevant
  • Use of ‘Firm Options’ to help with setting the appropriate data to be captured
  • Look at the categories available, you can add new categories, which will help to collate the required data
  • Go through ‘contacts’ – ‘individual’ level and that use is also at the different areas which will be useful for matters, organisation information as well
  • Categories allow the user to filter to the supplemental areas relevant at that point
• More advanced features –  Managing tasks – reducing internal email
  • Use and training for tasks, including logging when clients call and the follow up action required
  • Highlighting the importance of tasks and their role
  • Sorting tasks by priority and type, considering options best suited to reflect your firm’s preference
  • Use of tasks for effective management
  • Use of tasks by reception and within departments
• More advanced features –  Managing diaries, centralised diary system
  • Use and training diary functions, making and setting appointments for FEs
  • Linking of diary function back to specific matter
  • Helping FEs to manage their diary and tasks for a specific day etc.
• More advanced features –  Managing a law firm with ALB administration
  • Use of the ‘Administration’ client and then having matters specific to areas to be covered i.e. PI, Office policies, sick leave, office insurance etc.
  • Manage meetings and documents within the Administration feature

To find out more about our service contact Jason Cowley on legalshop@outlook.com or call 07717 071649 for a free initial discussion to see how we can be of help.