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Case Study in the series on Case tracking Online
AMS Law was formed in May 2000 following the merger of Ashton Morton Slack and The Law Partnership and is now one of the largest law firms in South Yorkshire. A total of 17 partners and approaching 50 fee earners provide clients with a wide range of legal services with particular expertise in dealing with personal injury, occupational illness, defendant insurance, corporate affairs, tax, serious fraud, relocation and conveyancing.
When the two practices decided to merge, one of the issues to be faced was IT and the systems being used by each firm. On completion of a comparative study, we chose AIM’s Evolution Client Serve. One of the major factors influencing our choice was the functionality provided by Evolution in automating case management.
Having successfully developed case management for many different areas of law (we now have over 50 main procedures, and 400 sub procedures) we began to develop web based reporting via AIM’s software Client Connect towards the end of 2001. We produced the first working version in February 2002 and launched this via numerous web sites using the ‘e-zee’ name. These are all grouped together under ‘e-zeedoesit.com’, and it is through these dedicated sites that clients, contacts and major providers are directed to the case reports.
The issues that needed to be resolved were
1. The method of producing the web based reports – timing of updates, removal of records, control of passwords etc,
2. Understanding the writing of the style sheets,
3. Deciding on the content of the reports. Clients wanted to be able to see the key decisions and actions without having to wade through the minutiae of a solicitors file.
Having mastered the methodology, we spent a great deal of time in discussions with clients about what they needed to see, and in what format. As a result, over the last twelve months – since the initial launch – we have redesigned the basic style of the style sheet, and now present the information in a more tabular form, enabling clients to immediately see the state of their transaction.
Our users are a wide range of clients, both individual and corporate, and contacts, including providers of business. Individual clients enjoy the 24/7 updates they can obtain, whilst corporate clients can access many files in one go. For one of our major clients we have over 500 reports available at any one time.
The great advantage of this system is that the data is extracted from our own case management system, which means that no extra keying in of data is necessary. The data is uploaded from our system to a separate server maintained by AIM, on a twice daily basis, costs being based on usage.
Firewall security is maintained by AIM on their own Client Connect Server, whilst the data that is passed to this server is controlled by AMS Law. All users are Password protected in their access, which is controlled centrally by our own staff. The system works well, and is becoming so popular that we are considering acquiring our own separate server dedicated to Client Connect.
All the development work has been done in house by three developers within IT, and although they have gained a great deal of knowledge about writing and running the system, it is relatively easy for anyone with IT development skills to understand and operate it.
The system has not been particularly costly in terms of hard cash to implement and use. There has been a high cost of the in-house development, but that is part of the IT function in any event.
The result of the investment is that our marketing department are now using this reporting tool to ‘sell’ different products, and to enable AMS Law to demonstrate a definite difference in the quality of service that is offered. As a result, new areas of work are being successfully explored and obtained, and existing areas are being developed and expanded.
It is this system that enabled AMS Law to be runners up in the 2002 LOTIES for the best online legal system, and winners of the 2002 Sheffield Business Awards for Information and Communication Technology.
Steven Williams, email steve.williams@amslaw.co.uk.
Firm: www.amslaw.co.uk and www.e-zeedoesit.com
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