Irwin Mitchell introduces client-friendly database

Irwin Mitchell introduces client-friendly database

Irwin Mitchell and legal IT partner Axxia Systems have unveiled their latest project - a 50,000 initiative to boost the national firm's systems integration and simplify client and matter inception.The practice has taken Axxia's XML-based e-Tran application to sit as a smart interface between its various discrete databases, automatically populating them with matching sets of any inputted data.

Initially, this will revolve around client and matter inception, a process that currently requires a complex and time-consuming set-up via the accounting system, manual conflict of interest checking, and subsequent re-keying into other practice databases.Irwin Mitchell's IT director Richard Hodkinson said: 'For secretaries and support staff, inception is fairly labour intensive and the accounts screens are not particularly user friendly.

With the need to enter data again into other databases, including two case management systems, we were not just making work for ourselves but were also risking inaccuracies creeping in.'The solution came through 'some software and a common sense piece of re-engineering', he explained.

'Our response has been to design an "intelligent window", a simple, clear browser-based form accessible via our Intranet from which new client and matter details can be entered just the once; upon submission of the form, e-Tran runs an automatic conflict check and if no conflicts are reported, seamlessly populates the other databases with identical output files.'