♫ Making it work
Takes a little longer
Making it work
Takes a little time…♫
In this edition of the Make it Work! blog category (which I have to confess was sparked by Doug Bennett and the rest of the Slug’s crooning in “Making it Work!”) I thought we could explore the different practice management systems in use in law offices today.
I have been an avid fan of Amicus Attorney for many years (having been the author of the book Amicus Attorney in One Hour for Lawyers) . Indeed, I use the product constantly in my practice and simply could not imaging practising law without it or a product substantially similar to it. However, I also recognize that ‘one size does not fit all’ and that there are other excellent products out there…LawStream, PCLaw and ProLaw being the most referenced out my way. However, there are a host of newcomers on the block: Client Profiles, LegalFiles and TimeMatters which may have a larger presence elsewhere but which are just starting to have a foundation out our way.
I use practice management software to track time, appointments, deadlines, to-do’s, calls, messages and much much more. Indeed, it is the organizing factor for my practice. The paper “25 Benefits of Case Management” is on the Law Society of BC’s website where I have tried to list the benefits of moving to this type of legal software.
In this installment of “Making it Work!” I would like to hear from you and find out what you use, what you like about it and how it seems to make you more efficient, effective and on top of your deadlines and tasks.
While installing and adjusting to a practice management software may take a little longer and take a bit of time, once it is working the payoffs are well worth the effort!
♫ The bad outweighs the good sometimes
That doesn’t mean we’re ’spose to give it up
My problems are yours, and yours are mine
…We gotta make it work…♫
Words and music by Ne-Yo.
How quickly a year goes by! This blog is now into its second year and I can only thank all the readers who have come together and either posted comments or emailed me about the blog and shared with me their ideas, feedback and energy - and in the process, made all the time and effort worthwhile!
I have been reflecting on my original goals in launching this blog. One of the objectives that I would like to emphasize this year is to increase the collaborative aspect of the blog medium - by encouraging a dialogue between all the readers. Accordingly, I am launching the Make it Work! blog category. The idea here is to start with a problem that lawyers or law firms are facing..and see how many ideas we can assemble thru the readers’ comments that help solve the problem. By coming up with the questions and working collaboratively on all the different ways we can find to solve them we can build an online storehouse of tips, techniques and ways to solve our common problems.
So I thought we could start with the whole idea of moving to the paperless office. I have seen firms adopting many different solutions. The central problem is to create an electronic version of the paper file and the filing cabinet. Without a centralized storage location, the ‘file’ is scattered over different storage devices, computers, email accounts, Blackberries and the like. This makes documenting the file and the instructions from the client, difficult if not impossible. Furthermore, as the number of files grow, so does the size of the problem. Some firms create a standard folder structure under Exchange and back that up with office policies that require the emails, files etc to be saved to the appropriate folder. But this can ..and does…fall apart if everyone does not follow the policy.
One of the more elegant solutions that I have seen work for a smaller firm was the integration of Amicus Attorney with Worldox and MS Outlook. I have seen larger firms move to DOCS open, Interwoven and others. However, the challenges still remain..and I know that many lawyers are very skeptical about giving up the paper.
What do you use? What are the strengths and drawbacks of your system? I am hopeful that by sharing, we all can gain further insights and make it work!