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It is a little 'rich' for Captain Senile to suggest that my posts were about 'promotion and marketing building' as in none of them did I say what I actually did!

I have no problem with him finding my profile on the web (glad to see that the senility hasn't yet prevented effective Google searches taking place).

As for Marshall Hall's comment that I don't do any 'grunt work' as he (or she) puts it, I spent many years working in practice, mainly doing residential conveyancing in two well-respected suburban firms. I know what it is like to run a hundred plus files at any one time with all the attendant time pressure and stress that that kind of work imparts.

I have the greatest respect for the Lexcel-accredited practices I visit. They are doing their absolute best to manage their businesses effectively and implement high standards of client care. Whenever a practice has received no client complaints since my last visit; I commend them for it as I am acutely aware of how difficult it is to keep all of the people happy all of the time. To suggest that I consider any of them as 'proles' is frankly offensive.

I have seen two instances recently where practices have harnessed the power of their IT systems to work without paper. One is a firm doing criminal defence work where all of their police station attendance and magistrates court prep. and reporting is undertaken electronically. Anything they get from the CPS etc. is scanned and added to the case management system. I had no part in that, the Practice Manager saw what the case management system was capable of achieving for them and implemented the change.

The other is a commercial firm where four of the fee earners have stopped creating paper files. They work electronically and they are planning to build on that success. I did suggest the change there and it was acknowledged that it was working when I last visited.

Lexcel is also about the morale and motivation of staff, so it would be somewhat strange for me to encourage a practice to turn its personnel into 'battery hens' with all of the negative effects that would create.

One of the latest additions to the Lexcel standard is a requirement for practices to implement a flexible working policy. Harnessing the power of case and document management goes 'hand in hand' with that requirement. If the only constraint to working effectively is having a web connection, then that opens up possibilities for many people who have issues with being office bound all of the time.

I spoke to someone recently during an assessment who said that they had a cold and just felt 'under par'. They didn't want to face the commute, but because they now worked electronically, anything that came into the office on paper was scanned. They could review their 'post' from home and progress matters via online access to the case management system.

If they had called in 'sick' and everything had been paper-based, it would have only put pressure on co-workers in the office. Without being reliant on paper, that situation was avoided.

The agility of being able to sit at a different desk when in the office is taking electronic working to another level. Obviously, that is only going to work where a practice operates in an open plan environment which lends itself to flexibility. It won't work in an office building comprised of a number of small rooms which at best can accommodate one or two people.

Lexcel allows assessors to make 'suggestions for best practice' in reports and I have suggested tentative steps to electronic working in a number of practices. I would only consider it 'juicy' with a likelihood to 'bear fruit' for a practice where 1) staff have the necessary IT skills 2) the document or case management system allows the user to create an electronic 'container' for all of the information relating to a matter or linked matters and 3) there is a positive approach to 'having a go'.

'Agile working' in what is I suppose its 'purest' sense as implemented by DAC Beachcroft, may be beyond what practices with limited accommodation and IT systems can currently achieve. It should not however, be ignored when formulating a strategic plan for the future.