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Case Study in the series on Case tracking Online
DIY Approach - Wilson Nesbitt by Kieran Gilmurray Wilson Nesbitt is a dynamic and progressive firm of Solicitors in Northern Ireland which has enjoyed rapid expansion in recent years. Wilson Nesbitt provides a wide range of services to private individuals, partnerships and companies. We have 150+ staff based in four offices (Bangor, Belfast, Holywood and Newtownards) of whom 24+ are solicitors. In addition the firm employs accountancy and tax practitioners, an in-house IT team and 39+ law graduates as trainee solicitors or paralegals. The Belfast head office of Wilson Nesbitt in which over 81 staff work has recently relocated to purpose built premises.
For our main firm's software, we use Solcase Case Management from Solicitec linked with SOS Practice Manager both of which products were provided through Solicitors Own Software in Bath, who additionally support both products. Wilson Nesbitt have been using this software for more than 4 years - and use many the modules available to leverage the product to its full advantage for many of our departments - accounts integration, automatic email, data extract for reports, etc for debt, Remortgage, conveyance, union, employers liability, personal injury, RTA, Probate, etc.
The software for case tracking from our software the suppliers seemed relatively expensive at the time we were originally considering online case access and the product then was not as fully developed as it is now. For example, at the time we began we were able to develop unlimited user online access at much less cost than a limited user system for which we were quoted by our supplier.
To produce our online systems we needed to extract the case management data from the Solcase system. This was made possible by the purchase of an additional 'data extraction' software module. We used this to additionally produce internal and external management reports and placed a web front as an interface to the reports databases to provide online access.
We use an automatic scheduler program bought over the internet to schedule data extracts from our case management systems over night and a freeware FTP program to ftp the resultant databases to our web server.
It has been difficult to "marry" the products together in a timely fashion to get the overall online system working - programs may work separately but it is only when these must be used together that the adventure becomes more challenging.
We host our own web server and databases are filled with data over night on our internal network and ftp'd the following morning to our web server.
Security concerns have been addressed internally and externally. We set policies in place to ensure only the correct client gets their online access details. Passwords and usernames are unique and randomly generated.
Case tracking was officially advertised, promoted and implemented as a service more than a year and a half ago, after 6 months of trials and testing.
All types of clients use the system - corporate, individual clients, work providers etc. Each vary in their requirements - some want online summaries of individual cases, some want reports in a particular form, some want automatic email updates only and some want overall work summaries. Online access to sites is only advertised to those clients using the online service. Although we advertise online services the web addresses used to gain online access bear no relation to those advertised. Clients access their matters online via secure channels (https:) and all web servers are hidden behind firewalls with both hardware and software protection in place. These are regularly patched to prevent hacking.
The level of expertise in the firm is relatively high but any 'missing' knowledge can easily be bought in. In particular, where external security consultants were required, these were brought in with no hesitation as we want clients to be confident in our systems.
A high level of product knowledge across varieties of products, technologies and platforms is needed to set online access in place using the methodology we employed and which has made this venture affordable. Overall, we would say that it is not for faint hearted, whichever method is used.
All online access must represent value for money in terms of the costs of making it work and the benefit the firm gains in terms of keeping business partners happy (be they individual customers, business partners, corporate) with accurate timely information and getting resultant business.
Though seeming intangibles such as PR or goodwill which generates other work must also be taken into account. By even approaching this area we have had considerable media interest.
Kieran Gilmurray, email kgilmurray@wilson-nesbitt.co.uk.
Firm: Wilson Nesbitt
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