What are Legal Tracker Systems?
Basing their operations on modernised data analytics is common practice amongst today’s successful law firms, but when it comes to the internal support of cases and matters, this is not always the case.
A legal tracker system offers a simple way of keeping track of legal cases, across multiple departments, for one or a variety of purposes. Catering to countless different legal practices, they do so in an efficient and effective manner that allows for gradual increased productivity. A legal tracker is, for instance, effectively a legal project record, and thus helps to optimise management, and more efficiently maximise speed and results-oriented work.
Legal tracker systems vary significantly in how they keep records, and thus, consequently suit differing requirements, but broadly speaking, they all share a few broadly similar components: they will house, at the very least, the case number, the title or description of the case, the start and end date, the people working on it and a block of observations for notes, comments, etc. Further functionality can be added through clever planning and customisation of the system, allowing them to become even more efficient. Best of all, they eliminate the risk of human error in a large, frequently sensitive task. For each employee, records of their caseload and deadlines, up to a decade old, will be stored and collatable.
Repetitive and tedious legal tasks are also lessened with a legal tracker system – this means better time for creative work , growth, and client interaction, in addition to better results. Finding information becomes faster and easier, which, in turn, raises revenue through increased efficiency and productivity. Work in law firms is made smoother, through collaboration, better communication, and enhanced workflow, essentially improving the service offered to clients. Success relies on optimal management of low level tasks, and a legal tracker provides the perfect tool for aiding this, increasing efficiency, and getting the absolute most from legal resources and assets.
Legal trackers thus offer myriad benefits and applications across a wide range of industries and situations, from besting competition, to developing long-term strategies through laser-focused financial analysis and trend estimation. Further, they allow the superior integration of information, providing multidimensional overviews, and tracking by metrics beyond cost; the added dimensions of time and effort lead to a more robust analysis.
Thanks to modernised data analytics, the use of data can now also be informed, as the processing of information moves from digital databases to actionable information. Legal tracker systems remain an increasingly important part of this for lawyers, clients and industry analysts alike, who are now able to discuss trial statistics, success rates, and other topical phenomena in a very practical and quantitative way.
Features of Legal Trackers
One of the great things about most legal trackers is their ability to keep you organized and help you manage your time and resources. Most tasks involve a number of actions performed over a period of time, whether you represent a plaintiff against a defendant or a defendant against a plaintiff.
To help manage these tasks, most legal trackers have robust features that look to make your job easier. A few of these features include:
-Automatic task reminders and to do lists designed to help you make deadlines and identify tasks due within a designated time period.
-Having the ability to allocate and examine resources. Resources can be the entire file or a specific document and can be assigned a level of importance for prioritization.
-Work assignments. Many legal trackers allow you to work as a team in a collaborative environment. Assigning work and delegating tasks becomes easy within a legal tracker and allows everyone to have their own tasks and deadlines.
-Tracking of billable time. Many legal trackers give you the option to set the rate for your legal work. Like all of the features great legal trackers offer, knowing a task must be completed in a timely manner helps you to prioritize your workload. Billable time may be tracked through a calendar, to do list or work assignments.
-Tracking of deadlines. Many trackers offer tracking and reminders. Important deadlines can come from opposing counsel or with matters being handled by multiple participants, a calendar reminder can serve to make sure all participants are ready for the trial or hearing.
-Invoicing, payment options and storage.
Again, all of these features are designed to help you manage your practice in a way that ensures you and your clients are best served. Software companies that create legal trackers are creating programs that really add value to the legal profession and help you to solve practical problems in a modern way.
Issues Faced with Legal Trackers
The implementation of legal tracker systems is also not without its challenges. Whilst everyone likes the sound of being able to better manage their matter workload and budgets, most have faced challenges along the way. Common issues include how the tracker interacts with existing systems, what essential reporting and spreadsheet information is needed, how easy it is to use and the time needed to deliver training and training materials. It takes time for those using a legal tracker to get to know the system and the benefits it can deliver, so resistance to change is not uncommon. Those already undertaking a manual input of time and costs into an Excel spreadsheet may also feel it was more effective than the digital alternatives. Involving relevant stakeholders at the outset is key to ensuring that a legal tracking system works for everyone. Recognizing that it will take time for a legal tracker to be fully adopted and understood, as well as having the budget to set up a system at the outset, are key to a successful implementation.
Benefits of Professional Legal Tracker Support
Despite the powerful array of features and functions offered by legal tracker systems, there are many companies that nonetheless require the services of a trained specialist to maximize its capabilities. In the case of highly customized systems, complicated pre-existing legacy architectures or specialized industry applications, the level of support required goes far beyond what a standard help desk can provide. Trained and experienced legal tracker support professionals can be invaluable in completing a number of projects , including: In addition to the above categories, experienced legal tracker support professionals can also provide valuable customization and optimization services for legal tracker systems. Custom input screen and report layouts and special processing routines are examples of areas where this type of input is needed. For example, many companies have dozens or even hundreds of standard forms that are used on a daily basis. Having these forms automatically generated directly from the data on their system can save valuable time and eliminate a great deal of manual work.
Choosing the Best Legal Tracker Support Company
The first thing to do is obtain a thorough description of exactly what support is available. Does it include call-ins for additional questions? Is there a dedicated support representative per customer (or at least a representative that can be contacted at a convenient time)? Of course, check on the hours of operations over the holidays! Some companies offer 24/7 support, but there is nothing wrong with having support available Monday through Friday from 8am to 8pm. If you ever have an emergency support issue, you can ask the client success officer to get you help. Also check on customer service options, such as live chat, video conferencing, screen sharing, and email. Most organizations cannot wait 24 hours for assistance on time-sensitive matters. Experience is another important factor. There should be nothing wrong with obtaining clients’ references if and when necessary. Also, vet any potential legal tracker support service by checking to see if they provide a satisfaction guarantee or free trial period. Price is important, but 24/7 service might not be that much more expensive. Shop around because most providers offer a la carte à la carte pricing for legal tracker support services. Check to see if they require you to commit to a specific time period for the support plan or if they charge a cancellation fee. It’s always a good idea to ensure that any ability to scale the support service (e.g., to increase the number of users) exists if you want one provider to handle all your legal tracker needs. There should be ample opportunity to increase the service level or downgrade the service based on the organization’s needs. There is nothing wrong with obtaining a 30-day free trial period.
Case Examples of Legal Tracker Support
Legal departments of various sizes have experienced significant efficiencies by deploying and utilizing legal tracker support. This is particularly true when teams are in different regions and have varying responsibilities and methods for how they interact with different companies for e-billing, time changes, etc. Each of these teams, notwithstanding, appreciates the need for centralization of certain information such as billing, matter status, and expense report data. Legal departments also value having visibility to aggregate key performance indicators and metrics in a centralized fashion that informs their decisions.
One global company that has disparate teams and widespread operations, leveraged their network of research analysts and paralegals to support both the deployment and ongoing maintenance of their Legal Tracker. The analyst team communicates directly with all internal clients to address invoicing inquiries. They also serve as the "general contractor" for the whole legal department, keeping legal admin functions running smoothly (and cost-effectively). In the short-term, the team focused on cleaning up in-flight and retrospective invoices. Now that they have data flow established to ensure timely and accurate billing, their responsibilities have shifted to ensuring that there’s an efficient approach to course-correcting future invoices. This team is consistently pushing their external counsel to play nicely with the program. With their approach , they are able to focus on strategies to drive down billing and improve the quality of information collected in real time.
A large USA-based Fortune 100 company’s legal department restructured their processes (and personnel) to support the launch of their Legal Tracker. All internal clients were referred to a single point of contact with immediate-response capability. This contacts’ sole responsibility was to resolve pricing, scope and administrative issues. Since the legal department had a firm handle on timeline priorities of open matters, they pulled together the entire team of national and international practice attorneys at a centralized location to review all active matters. Each practice group created a checklist of the most common tasks they follow for their most common types of matters. Then, they went through all current matters and identified, based on the checklist, which tasks should be reviewed, and then contacted external counsel for clarification. They also implemented a communication plan to reach out to their non-time & expense entry external counsel to provide support to them, as well. These efforts eliminated unnecessary time spent investigating invoices, and reduced the number of occurrence of disputes once the invoices were received. Since implementation, they have cut the time to complete the invoice review process in half and eliminated the need for post-mortems after receiving external counsel invoices.