Should law firms customise their case management workflows?

What is workflow for law firms?

Good legal case management software usually has a powerful workflow engine at its centre, as well as a range of integrated value-add modules that enable fee earners to manage their caseloads. Workflows for law firms tend to be built around the different areas of law, but can also be used for managing non-law based functions too – such as onboarding a new clients, complaints handling and for compliance management processes.

A workflow is a software chart that guides a fee earner through the various steps of a case. Following a logical but flexible sequence good workflow chart will utilise ‘already-keyed’ data to automate the repetitive but important tasks, freeing up the legal talent to focus on the aspects of the case that require tact, personality and charisma.

Workflow software tools should offer a practice of law enough flexibility to enable its fee earners to bend and shape the charts to match their preferred working practices. The best suppliers offer a level of configuration that enables law firms to achieve this.

Why do law firms need workflow software charts?

A legal practice workflow is usually developed to automate repetitive processes that consist of a series of tasks that usually need to be completed in a specific order. Well-designed, integrated workflow systems enable the data stored in a firm’s case and practice management system to be drawn from different areas of the system, so that it only ever has to be keyed in once, eliminating duplication of effort. For case progression, a workflow will guide users from one stage to the next properly, triggering actions and reminders until completion. It provides a kind of proven ‘formula’ for ensuring all the necessary information for a case is collated, and the required documentation is generated, shared and signed as and when appropriate. Good workflow for case management is flexible, and keeps a user-friendly repository for all case related records and captures time against the case for accurate fee earner billing.

What are the workflow options on offer to law firms?

A decent software supplier will offer a range of proven workflow charts for all if not most areas of law, as well as functional cross-department processes. They will also generally offer a workflow tool so that law firm staff can create their own workflow charts, and enhance existing charts.

Often a firm will buy a range of proven workflows from its software supplier for all its areas of law. It will then review and assess them against the firm’s own specific process preferences. Every law firm has a unique way of doing things, however, a solid workflow chart provides an excellent starting point. Tweaking and enhancing an existing, proven workflow is highly recommended to bring it in line with the way the firm likes to run things. The same is highly recommended with workflows the firm’s experts have created themselves. Especially after a few years have passed, and of course when changes in the law occur.

Why should law firms avoid complex workflow customisation?

The key to getting the right balance when it comes to workflow customisation is all about avoiding over-complex processes. Sometimes trying to automate every aspect of an area of law and forcing fee earners down a rigid sequence, in terms of how and when they complete tasks can back-fire. Life (and law) is rarely that predictable. An element of flexibility has to be built-in to encourage fee earner buy-in. Also, highly customised and rigid workflows are notoriously difficult to support. If too complex, often only the person who originally designed them really understands them. Also if a workflow design strays too far from the off-the-shelf chart purchased from your software supplier, the support operatives on the help desk will struggle to keep up with its nuances, making trouble-shooting incredibly challenging.

When buying new software some people believe customisation is crucial to squeezing every inch of value out of the system. Whilst the wish list of all the things the firm’s previous system could not do may be close to your heart, you should avoid customisation for customisation’s sake. Unless a specific new feature will provide a distinct competitive advantage or a clearly measurable benefit, our advice is ‘don’t go there!’ If not managed correctly, over-egging your workflow customisation, building in too much automation can cause untold user confusion, frustrating support challenges and unnecessary upgrade delays – not to mention delayed implementation, major cost overruns, and higher upgrade costs with some suppliers.

A good legal software supplier will work with you and provide advice on how far to go with legal case management workflow customisation. If you can achieve the right balance your system will guide users through key processes whilst empowering them to do their jobs well. Over do it, and you may scupper your chances of achieving decent levels of fee earner software utilisation.

Access Legal offers a wide variety of proven case management workflow charts to law firms for use as they are, or for customisation. We also offer a build-your-own-workflow tools, with consultancy to help you get the most out of your case management system.

Workflows available from Access Legal are:

Conveyancing
Crime
Court of protection
Commercial
Debt Collection
Employment
Family
Financial mis-selling
Mental health
Personal injury
Wealth management
Client Care
COLP & COFA processes
Complaints
Plus many more

To discuss your workflow needs, please contact our expert team, or request a free demo today.

Also, please feel free to download our “Software Switching Guide for Law Firms”.

Litigation Workflow Example

A good litigation workflow chart would guide fee earners through the logical steps and sequences of the case, relating to:

FILE OPENING: The issuing of a file opening form, with conflict, AML checking steps, logging an audit trail and diarising a monthly file review.
CLIENT CARE: There would be a step to generate the firm’s client care letter and terms of business.
FUNDING: There would be a step that gathers the details of the claim and case funding with logic and sequencing to work out limitation dates and set up reminders accordingly. FUNDING: A funding step would deal with conditional fee agreements, damages-based agreements, will generate authorities and relevant correspondence to the funder and ATE (after-the-event) or BTE (before-the-event) insurers.
CLAIMANTS/DEFENDENTS: You may have a step to enable users to create linked cases for any other parties involved. There will be a range of steps to help the fee earner identify claimants and defendants, and their solicitors, insurers etc., and the gathering of their details. You will also manage any correspondence to these parties here, and you will be able to suppress certain steps in the logic (e.g. correspondence triggers) based on the type of contact, e.g the opposition.
INVESTIGATIONS & EVIDENCE: This would be another key section of the workflow, where users gather information and record correspondence with an expert witness for example, or other third parties.
MEDIATION: You would expect standard letters here you can use and or edit to send to solicitor, client and mediator.
PAD: Pre-action disclosure will guide case-users through the making and enforcing of pre-action disclosure, including letters to defendant and the court as well as the required claim forms. You would expect integration to something like Laserform or Oyez for this.
NEGOTIATIONS: Third party negotiations would be part of your litigation workflow chart, where there are steps helping the case worker to deal with situations where liability is admitted, denied or whether the P36 provision of the civil procedure rules are to be applied to settle the dispute without going to trial.
ISSUING/DEFENDING: A good litigation workflow chart would guide the fee earner through the steps required regarding the issuing / defending of proceedings, including guidance with the preparation, generation and lodging of a court bundle. This would include letters and forms to the court, the defendant and the client. Steps would be executed or suppressed based on answers to a series of questions. Protective proceedings would also be handled here when the limitation date is about to expire.
ENFORCEMENT: Relevant enforcement activities can be included in a litigation workflow. It might be a warrant of execution, third-party debt order, charging order on land or property, attachment of earning sorder etc. together with a letter to the court sending enforcement application.
INSTRUCT COUNSEL: Instruct counsel and send brief would be another relevant step in a litigation workflow.
FINANCE: There will be a number of hook tasks for finance within a good workflow to account posting requests, billing guides, ledger prints, fee earner billing, payment chasing letters etc.