Case study: How one legal firm solved the probate pricing problem with help of Exizent
Friends Legal saw an opportunity to make things better. Launching their new By Your Side initiative, their aim was to make the professional legal services for bereavement more accessible, affordable, and transparent for bereaved families. Tony O’Malley, Friends Legal Managing Partner, witnessed complicated processes currently in place for afterlife services and the varied costs charged within the industry. He knew it was time to make a difference:
“If you visit any number of solicitors’ websites, it can be extremely complicated to work out what you will pay, if you find fees mentioned at all.
“It needs to change, and the interests of bereaved families put first.”
Adopting Advanced Technology
Tony and his team knew that to provide the best customer service at affordable rates, early adoption of technology would be important. Reducing time spent on repetitive work and maximising profitability through efficiency was key. They started seeking the use of advanced technology to help keep costs down and reduce time spent on administration and lengthy asset discovery. Despite the industry being very traditional in their methods, Friends Legal saw the substantial benefits of adopting technology such as Exizent in the early stages to provide an improved service for their clients.
“Exizent’s executry platform puts everything in one place and makes it easier for us to provide high quality and efficient service to our clients. We can streamline our administration and case organisation, leaving us more time to work with our clients directly.
“If we adopted the same industry methods, our clients would suffer significantly in terms of cost and time. This was something we refused to consider.”
Without Exizent’s technology, Friends Legal decided it would be very difficult to offer their clients the service and costs they are able to now. From a business perspective, the traditional methods of performing probate are very costly. Manually posting letters and documents between firms and contacting all parties through varying platforms is unrealistic and unsustainable. Friends Legal strived to be able to manage everything from one location and reduce the unnecessary back and forth between institutions.
Exizent Platform
Amy Wardrop, Senior Solicitor at Friends Legal, leads the By Your Side afterlife service department and has a vast amount of experience within estate and trust administration.
It was important for Amy and her team to be working with an organisation that shared their values. It was equally important to make the right choices for their business and starting with the right technology for the job:
“Exizent’s online platform is a breath of fresh air. We used to use Excel to manually process everything, which was near impossible to keep on top of and manage efficiently.
“I love the intuitive nature of Exizent’s online dashboard, the ability to click an asset as completed to show visually it’s done makes the administration of large cases that bit easier. As a team of lawyers who were not particularly tech savvy, the speed in which we have got to grips with the platform is very much testament to the ease of use.
“There hasn’t been anything the platform can’t do and working alongside the Exizent team has been fantastic. I’ve already saved so much time through the integrations with the likes of Zoopla and we are excited as a team to continue our relationship with Exizent and watch the continued development of the platform for the better.”
Exizent believe in working closely with their customers and this was a feature that brought Friends Legal to the platform. It is this relationship that allows Exizent to be responsive to their clients’ needs and prioritise features that they believe are essential.
Technology at the forefront
Technology is becoming more accessible and easier to use. Friends Legal saw the benefits of investing in technology such as Exizent and believe it has been instrumental for their new By Your Side afterlife services function.
To hear more about how Friends Legal solved the probate pricing problem with the help of Exizent, read the full case study or download your own copy, click here.
