Focis: Ode to Case Management
I have been working in Legal Technology on and off (but mostly on) for about 20 years. The fact I have become one of those people who can say I’ve been in any industry that long depresses me a little but there it is. When I say Legal Technology I also principally mean Case Management. Yes the same Case Management that so many tried to implement in the late 90’s, so many failed at during the early “noughties” then many either gave up , started calling it something else entirely or decided it was too hard and they didn’t need it anyway because:
“Case Management is only for “volume” work and our firm / work type is much too difficult / special to be automated”.
I was up to my elbows in document header scripts, interest calculators and bun fights about document styles just around the time Richard Susskind produced a grid that I never fully understood but many firms took to mean “blame the IT Team and buy something else”.
As I sit here today trying to write a simple contact grid script in Visualfiles I was reminded how hard Case Management is. Not because of Visualfiles itself. They are one of the few suppliers who have stuck with Case Management from the beginning and truly understood it’s value. I just wish they would understand it’s own value even more.
Case Management is hard because it usually involves every person in the firm changing even in a small way how they do things. When done properly it involves re-engineering every process and every client interaction a firm has. What’s more: IT NEVER ENDS!. Every other sector and project I have worked on since seem a walk in the park compared to Case Management development and implementation.
Well for those firms and brave pioneers that really stuck at it back then , worked through the pain barrier, the support calls , the whining fee earners and the sleepless nights this article is here to say one thing. You were right. The work you have done has added incalculable value to the firms you delivered for. The Partners of those firms I suspect still don’t see the value you have added. Many in fact have hugely undervalued it’s worth, taken in by the bright lights of the big city firms with IT Teams in the hundreds:
“Surely they must have better systems than us?”
Beyond buildings, staff, Practice Management Systems, Document Management and Artificial Intelligence a working firm wide automated Case Management system is the single biggest asset any law firm has. The banks and insurers have also finally caught up and now expect truly seamless integration with their Panel Law Firms. Only those firms that have defined workflows can keep up. Now the pressure is on to deliver the kind of efficiencies demanded by those same corporate clients to maintain profitability. Firms have continued to invest in Practice Management Systems and BI solutions that identified the point at which work no longer becomes profitable, that scream out the need to become more efficient. Really what those systems are saying is:
“you should have spent the money on case management first”.
A good firm wide Case Management system across ALL work types is at the core of every good firm. Without it no amount of PMS,BI,DMS or CRM investment can ever truly deliver.
For those in firms who have got it right they should be shouting it from the rooftops. You have done the hard part. Online collaboration, b2b and b2c integration with your clients, document management, CRM and even AI are all at your fingertips. In fact their implementation should now be so much more straightforward you can afford the risk of working with a newer more agile startup partner in legal tech.
For those Law Firms who have not invested in Case Management, whose implementation is patchy across the firm or you didn’t put it at the centre of everything you do, you are running out of time. No matter how big you are the day of reckoning is approaching.
