Time is money for law firms as much as any others, and any technology that gives them the potential to increase turnover and - more importantly - to improve profit margins must be a welcome one.

Charles Christian runs the rule over case management software

In a market where time is money, case management software is one technology that gives law firms the potential to increase turnover and - more importantly - to improve their profit margins by working smarter rather than harder.

At its most basic level, case management automates the common elements of handling a particular class of work - such as residential conveyancing - by a combination of 'decision trees', workflows and document templates.

These typically work along the lines of 'if after 14 days you have not received a reply, send out reminder letter A; if you have received a response, send out acknowledgement letter B', and can progress a matter from initial instructions though to completion.

The beauty of this approach is that not only does it allow a firm to handle a higher volume of work without increasing its headcount - because generating correspondence becomes a simpler matter of clicking on computer menu options rather than dictating a letter and waiting for it to be transcribed - but it also permits routine work to be delegated to more junior staff, thereby freeing qualified fee-earners to concentrate on high-billing tasks.

In other words, case management is an ideal solution for any firm with a high-volume, relatively low-margin workload - such as residential conveyancing, debt recovery and personal injury claims - where matters need to be processed as cost efficiently as possible.

Although there is nothing novel about the concept of case management technology - some solicitors' practices have been using it in this country since the late 1970s - over the years there has been a shift in views as to how they should be implemented to gain the maximum benefit.

For example, the old view was that a system must exactly mirror the way a firm had always handled a particular class of work, whereas it is now appreciated that unless the firm is prepared to change some of its own internal processes (such as moving to standard templates rather than allowing fee-earners to create their own individual documents), it will never enjoy the full benefits of automation.

There is also a wider acceptance that instead of striving to create the perfect case management system that can handle every eventuality, it is better to opt for the 80/20 rule.

This means a system that can do 80% of the job and leave the remaining 20% - all those exceptions and one-offs that crop up from time to time - to be handled manually by fee-earners.

On the other hand, it is now also recognised that along with the more traditional benefits of case management software (increased productivity, lower per-matter overheads, faster turn-around times) there are also other benefits.

These include the ability to implement quality assurance (including Lexcel) and service delivery standards customised to meet the exact needs of individual institutional clients, such as the Legal Services Commission, insurance companies and mortgage lenders.

These institutions impose increasingly strict compliance, matter-handling procedures and reporting requirements on their panel and franchise firms.

In addition, it is worth noting that a good case management system - which will inevitably include some form of key dates, diary and reminder-reporting facility, so you never overlook an important deadline or appointment because a fee-earner is ill or on holiday - also provides the foundations for a risk management system.

In fact, just saving the excess on one professional indemnity insurance claim on a residential conveyancing deal could more than pay for the implementation of case management in many firms.

One final point to note is that most modern case management software can also offer some form of 'Web enablement' facility - such as on-line case tracking - thereby providing more ambitious firms with the foundations for an eventual move into e-commerce and on-line legal services.

The market

As the tables indicate, there are a huge number of suppliers selling case management systems in this market, covering almost all areas of legal work.

To simplify matters, here we focus on three of the most widely used high-volume/low-margin areas: debt recovery, residential conveyancing and personal injury claims.

However, many suppliers of conveyancing software also offer remortgaging systems and, similarly, personal injury vendors frequently also offer systems for handling road traffic and uninsured-loss recovery claims.

Most suppliers claim to offer broadly comparable features in their systems - but watch out for the issue of accounts integration.

For example, some case management systems will only work if the firm also runs that supplier's accounts and practice management software - in other words, if they are integrated systems - whereas other products will happily operate on a stand-alone basis.

To add further confusion, most stand-alone case management systems can also offer accounts integration as an optional extra.

Pricing

Because some systems have been developed for larger firms, where the software will be used by teams or departments running into dozens of fee-earners, they require substantially beefier databases to support their operations than systems designed for small firms with just a handful of users.

Unfortunately, this does mean their entry level pricing for a complete system - particularly if the cost of an accounts systems also has to be factored in - may seem disproportionately higher.

But their subsequent 'per seat' user pricing may actually be cheaper than some smaller systems that cannot offer the same economies of scale.

The cost of the hardware must be added to all prices.

Solicitors should also factor in installation, implementation, training and ongoing support costs.

The suppliers

The tables include the main suppliers of case management systems who sell and are currently actively marketing packaged solutions catering for the needs of the broader high street sector.

It does not include suppliers of workflow/BPM (business process management) systems, which typically require an in-house IT resource to help the firm implement the software, or suppliers who asked to be omitted from the list.

Charles Christian is the editor of the Legal Technology Insider newsletter

This article refers to tables that appear in the printed edition [2004] Gazette, 7 May, pages 20 - 22