INFOTECH

Case management: have we got options for you

Even five years ago, the term 'case management' was still synonymous with relatively inflexible software applications best suited to processing high-volume, low-margin legal work such as debt collection, bent-bumper motor claims, residential conveyancing and personal injury work.

But since then, both the market and the technology have moved on, so that the capabilities and scope of this kind of system are now far better suited to meeting the needs of the modern solicitor's practice.

However, by way of confusing the picture, what used to be called case management software has now split into three distinct strands: discrete case management applications, matter management (called 'case lite') and workflow management systems.

Although based on broadly the same technologies (in effect they are all different shades of the same overall concept), the objective behind matter management is not to try to create a workflow, complete with 'decision trees', covering every eventuality and all aspects of handling a particular class of work - such as clinical negligence claims - from opening the matter through to sending out a bill to the client and archiving the completed file.

Instead, matter management seeks to automate just some aspects of the legal process common to all matter types, such as opening the file, running conflicts of interest and money laundering checks, sending out the practice rule 15 client care letters, filing documents against the correct client/matter file, and diarising case plans.

Admittedly this is not rocket science, but it is enough to ensure it saves fee-earners a few minutes of administration time on each matter every week.

This may not sound much, but when totalled across every fee-earner in a firm over a year, it can become a serious amount of money - and enough to help a system pay for itself within a short period even within a smaller practice.

The third category - what might be termed 'pure' workflow applications - are used to automate individual tasks within the practice management arena.

To date, workflow technology is most widely used (and primarily in larger firms) to automate the cheque requisitioning process, which involves an apparently time-wasting circulation of slips of paper between lawyers and their accounts departments.

Next time, we will take a look at the practice management concepts behind case management.

Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society's Software Solutions guide