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Case Study in the series on Case tracking Online
Note from Delia: I am including below a second case study for Solicitec, this time from a small firm. There are very few small firms which have yet embarked upon this enterprise and nearly all the firms who are included in these case studies have IT departments. Fitzpatricks does not. They have had a hard time getting it all working.
I am a sole practitioner and the Principal of FitzPatricks, Burgess Hill, West Sussex, which I started in 1973. This is a small High Street Firm, which engages largely in private client work. There are two assistant solicitors, one dealing in conveyancing and the other in litigation with particular emphasis in family and employment matters. We now have para-legals instead of secretaries. We have had IIP and LEXCEL quality standards since 1999.
We started to develop case management in earnest in 1997. We wanted practice and case management to be integrated at the outset. We also wanted to be sure that our hardware and software suppliers would be able to talk to one another. We did not want them both blaming each other when things went wrong.
Our software suppliers were SOS, who offered their own practice management system and also the Solcase case management system from Solicitec. However, they had little understanding of Solcase, which accounted for continual debates at Solicitec user conferences on the disadvantaged SOS sites when compared with the Solicitec sites. We started to get some serious results out of Solcase in late 1998 but there were still glitches. Solicitec announced Solcase Online in 1999 and it immediately looked like something we wanted but we held off ordering it until our own essential case management system was working properly. We ordered Solcase Online in June 2000.
Our case management now includes all residential conveyancing, wills and probates, business sales and commercial property, employment, divorce and commercial contracts. In fact, everything we now do is through the case management system.
In August 2000, we had our project meeting for Solcase Online. We discussed with Solicitec our needs and the way we had set up (i.e. programmed) Solcase. We were told we were the only firm who linked conveyancing sales with purchases but it was agreed that we should, after the necessary training, be able to go live in November. The following January, by which time our frustrations were getting extreme, Solicitec discovered that they had not allowed for linked sales and purchases and had to re-program. They had forgotten our linked systems. What with this and other matters, we could not go live until June 2001, eight months behind schedule. The cost was not just in time. We had lost sales, so the expense was considerable.
Solcase Online now works very well, with clients being very content with the efficiency of our conveyancing operation. I believe we were the first of Solicitec’s smaller customers to use the program properly for private clients. So far as we know, we are still the only firm who update Online as it happens, in real time.
We host our own case management software but the website is hosted elsewhere. People seeking Online access log on through our website host and are re-directed to our server where the data is held. Data is continuously updated as it happens. We are responsible for our own security.
With any website based system, there are bound to be security and confidentiality issues. The client part of the website is password protected but there are broader issues involved which we had to organise ourselves locally – they were not handled by Solicitec.
What level of IT experience is needed? To set up the system, we needed someone with the patience to undertake the detailed and laborious task of encoding all the processes required for each type of work then to train the fee earners to use the system properly. There is also the laborious business of dealing with quotes from hardware suppliers and being able to distinguish the specifications of one company from those of another. There must be someone to drive everything forward, someone to monitor how the system is being used and someone to oversee any amendments or improvements, to ensure that these do not have unexpected side effects elsewhere. These do not necessarily have to be separate individuals and indeed, in a small firm, everyone has multiple roles in any case. Developing the IT system has to be fitted in with "real" work.
The costs of IT are not simply in buying the software, programming it and training people to use it. There is also the loss of work being passed up while the whole process is happening, and also in replacing staff who leave for whatever reason during the process. People cannot work flat out and learn new skills at the same time. Our costs, taking all these things into account, spread over the years, will be well upwards of £550k.
The personnel costs when people come and go cannot be predicted but otherwise, once the system is up and running, it should not be too expensive We have the advantage that we shall not be paying licence fees for the individual programs because we have produced our own. Of course, upgrading will be needed for both software and hardware but as we have not upgraded (except for taking Online) for three years, and what we have does the job it is currently required to do, we are not looking at upgrading again just now.
The target now is to fund future activities from profits and this we shall quickly be able to do.
Tom Fitzpatrick, email fitz@fitzpatricks-law.co.uk.
Firm: Fitzpatricks.
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