Chicago Lawyer Legal Technology Guide 2011 : Page 14
From Good to Great: Thriving with Case Management Software By Karen Clifford Client Profiles aw firms can be notoriously slow to adopt new technology. Even in today’s world of ubiquitous technology, I still hear stories from paralegals and secretaries lamenting the attorneys’ continued use of post-it notes and yellow legal pads for most everything the y do fro m jo tting do w n time e ntrie s to w riting e ntire briefs (hand-cramp, anyone?). However, technology waits for no one and law firms that don’t adapt will fall behind their more tech-loving counterparts. L matter is good, but knowing how they relate to the matter, to each other, to other matters and to the firm is great. You may know who your expert witnesses are, but do you know their rates, their secondary expertise, their courtroom demeanor and all the matters they’ve worked on for you? Can you get this information quickly or do you have to go to several places? As so many G.I. Joe public service announcements have taught us, knowing is half the battle. Tracking data electronically is a good thing. Getting usable information quickly and easily is a great thing and it should be what any technology company should strive to accomplish for your firm. Unfortunately, some do not and the end user has to make up for the gap between finding the data and making sense of it --an onerous task at best and one that produces faulty information at worst. Sufficient research into the technology you want to implement is essential and these are some things to keep in mind: --Does it play well with others (e.g., MS Office, Sharepoint, etc.)? --What kinds of data can be tracked, and equally important, what CAN’T be tracked? --What kinds of reports and documents can be compiled from that data? Is it easy? Does it take a programming degree to query the system for information? --Once you have the information you’re looking for, can you read and analyze it easily? Great technology can be the best silent partner you have at your firm, but poor, outdated or a complete lack of technology can be a hindrance to productivity. Where does your firm stand? A b o u t th e A u th o r: K a re n C l i ffo rd i s R e g i o n a l S a l e s Ma n a g e r fo r C l i e n t Profiles, an Atlanta-based developer of practice management and CRM software for law firms. Karen has more than a decade of experience in legal technology and oversees business development for the western U.S. She is a graduate of the University of New Mexico. She can be reached at kclifford@clientprofiles.com. It’s no secret that technology, if used correctly, can improve the efficiency and profitability of a firm. For any firm that wants to stay competitive in today’s market, technology is a must. But when we talk about “technology”, what exactly does that mean? All law firms use some type of technology. It may be in the form of online access to a legal database, an electronic accounting program or merely a smartphone. More and more law firms rely on the use of technology for everything they do from contact relationship management to scheduling to document management to billing and accounting. It’s no coincidence that law firms that embrace technology are at the top of their game since they are able to work and share information more efficiently amongst the firm and with their clients. R e g a rdle s s o f ho w muc h te c hno lo g y y o ur firm us e s , a ll law firms need to track and find data – data in the form of people, companies, dates, numbers, documents, deadlines, etc. Good technology will allow you to easily track this information. Great technology will allow you to pull all that data together to provide you with useful information at a moment’s notice. For example, knowing how much the attorneys are billing is good, but knowing their average billing rate is great. Why? Because some attorneys bill a lot of time that has to be written off for one reason or another. By analyzing their billed hours vs. what the firm collects gives you an excellent trend analysis of their average billing rate over time. It’s then easier to see which attorneys consistently have higher billing rates and which attorneys may need a billing intervention to find out if they are over-billing or if they are taking on deadbeat clients. Another example: knowing who the parties are on a 14 Legal Technology Update 2011
Publication List
Using a screen reader? Click Here