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Lees Lloyd Whitley based in Wirral, Liverpool & London, is a national practice with around 220 employees. The firm can trace its roots back to 1820. We cover a broad spectrum of work including private client, public sector and commercial. The firm places great emphasis on the use of technology to support the provision of innovative legal solutions to its clients.
It is important to stress that before embarking on the procurement of an ‘Online’ system considerable time and effort was spent looking at the underlying business case and subsequently defining requirements. As a result of this analysis a number of perceived benefits were clearly defined and return on investment predicted to be substantial. For example enhancing our availability to our client base by providing them with clear, relevant and explanatory information they can review at their convenience. Not only is this beneficial to the client as they can enquire outside normal working hours but it will deflect enquiries away from our staff and allow them to concentrate on progressing matters.
Our CMS is provided by Norwel and the workflows we use were all designed in-house. Our relationship with Norwel goes back 20 years, so naturally we approached Norwel with a view to evaluating their ‘Online’ offering and pleasingly found that the Norwel ‘Online’ system more than adequately met the majority of our requirements. We also found a willingness to work with us on the remainder.
Our client base ranges from individuals to large referrers, unions and government departments, so it was important to us that a number of differing views of our data could be presented to our clients based on their particular requirements. For example an individual conveyancing client would only be interested in an individual matter whereas a referral source is more likely to want a holistic picture of all ongoing matters we are acting on for them, perhaps with the inclusion of benchmarks or milestones specific to them.
The Norwel system offered the flexibility to provide this and by closely working with Norwel recent joint effort has resulted in the provision of 'Debt Recovery Online'.
The standard 'Online' modules provided by Norwel are available in two varieties one which bolts on to the standard CMS and another which bolts on to the Norwel Debt Collection system.
Key functionality offered by the system includes the ability to review the progress of a matter; view documents associated with the matter; view the matter ledger together with the ability to view general case registration information. The system is closely linked to our Workflows and can be easily customized to reflect specifics required by individual referral sources. A particularly novel and valuable feature is ‘Correspondence notes’, this allows the client to send web based email directly to the fee earner/member of staff responsible for the case and vice versa, all ‘Correspondence’ being stored against the matter for future reference.
The Norwel Online module runs on IIS 5 and uses Active Server Pages. Queries are made in real-time against our data. Due to the real-time nature of the system we have opted to host our own Web Server (Windows 2000 server running IIS5), this sits behind a Watchguard firewall in a De-militarised Zone (DMZ). Connectivity to the outside world is provided by a 2mb SHDSL connection, this is a protected circuit so should it fail our ISP will route traffic over an alternative circuit to our site.
Security is paramount due to the sensitivity of the information stored and the system addresses this by making use of Secure Socket Layers (SSL), providing clients with the peace of mind they require from such a service and falling in line with government and regulatory body directives. The view of the data a client or referrer sees is dependant on the username and password they supply and the restrictions we apply to it, for example individual client Mr. X can only view matters associated with him, whist referral source Y can see all matters we are acting on for them. This combined with SSL allows us great flexibility and allows us to maintain confidentiality and adherence with the Data Protection Act etc. for example Source Y might have referred a client X, but X does not wish his information to be disclosed to Y, we can quite easily exclude matters for X from any views of our data Y has.
Because of the nature of the technology used (Active Server Pages) the client does not have to download any plug-ins or extensions in order to be able to use the system. Reviewing your file is as simple as connecting to the LLW website and logging in by supplying an allocated username and password. We felt this to be an extremely important requirement for the system given the wide range of methods for Internet access, PC, PDA etc. and the varying connection speeds they support. It is also important as ‘Online access’ is potentially a tool for attracting new business, however if a client is expected to wait around for plug-ins etc. to download they are likely to move on to the next website.
In order to access the system clients first visit www.llw.co.uk, this site is hosted on our ISP’s server. Only when they select ‘LLW Online’ are they redirected to our in-house server. This minimises bandwidth usage on our Internet connection and also allows us to easily interpret web stats. E.g. differentiate general browsing from users of the online system. In addition to this acts as a catchment should our internal server or comms link fail, allowing us to provide a meaningful service update rather than a ‘404 – page not found’ error.
In terms of timescales development of the system by Norwel to accommodate our needs was finalized within a fortnight and because we already had the hardware and comms infrastructure in place we found the implementation of the system to be smooth and straightforward. The system was installed and configured within a day and aesthetic changes to the layout of the standard ASP pages provided by Norwel in order that the system complimented our existing website’s look and feel took less than a day. Going one-step beyond this we have also tailored pages to reflect the corporate look and feel for individual clients, referrers and other organisations.
LLW has an in-house IT team of six undertaking a range of activities ranging from hardware and software support, web development, training, through to strategic planning and BPR and I feel that this together with the willingness of Norwel to listen to and accommodate our requirements has greatly assisted in the smooth implementation of the system.
Obviously because our systems are now in the public domain and effectively available for use 24/7 we have had to make arrangements for alerts to be sent (SMS, email etc) should something go wrong, implement monitoring tools and provide the necessary staff cover in order that a quick resolution be arrived at. Now not only do the IT team support internal support requests but external client requests too, this has necessitated changes in the way in which our helpdesk works and additional benchmarks and service levels being implemented. In addition to this having ‘web’ clients access your systems real time can have an impact on performance, luckily for us this is not the case but as demand increases this may have to be reviewed. This of course carries with it cost implications that should not be ignored if contemplating a similar initiative.
In the first instance we decided to launch ‘Debts Online’ and depending on the success and overall experience, consider the role out of online access for other types of work.
'Debt Recovery Online' went live in the New Year and is currently in day-to-day use with a number of large Lees Lloyd Whitley clients.
Feedback has been extremely encouraging and the perceived benefits we had anticipated have already begun to be realised.
Tony Nicholls, ASN@llw.co.uk.
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