What is the most competitive niche that you can think of?
What comes to mind immediately is something along the line of real estate business, advertising and of course legal practice. Lawyers are competitive by the very nature of their occupation. Think of it, their job consists of preparing the case (whatever that may be) and directly competing with opposing side to defend the interest of their client.
We tend to think, because of movies and TV shows, that most action happens in the courtroom. But nothing can be further from the truth. Most of the time is spent on a research of similar cases, preparing the case, reading through the endless legal codes nights after nights and making up best strategy.
While the charisma of a lawyer plays a major part in the job, we often overlook the sheer data processing that goes behind the scenes. Today, the technology can be a great resource to step up your game and improve existing workflows that are not up-to-date
Document systematization
Email systems, shared drive or other typical legal practice software solutions, utilized widely in other industries, are not a good pick for law firms. Simply because you have a vast amount of documents for each case. Plus you need an organized database of all the legal codes and case history. It’s a lot of files. Back in a day, when there were no DMSs (document management system), big law firms had entire libraries at their disposal. And of course, manual files fall into chaos very quickly.
Modern DMS allows seamless systematization, tagging documentation, hierarchical structure and logical indexing. Everything that a library would have, only now.
DMS provides easy search & quick access
In order to organize the case, you need to pull data from many different sources. Transcripts, past cases, you name it. Organization of documents together with the ability to search and retrieve any document is one of the greatest demands for law organizations.
But again, if you just found a 3,000-page document with current “healthcare code”, there are still over 3,000 pages to look through. Well, that’s where filtering results through metadata and optical character recognition (OCR) conversion come in handy. This allows you to drill down to your database and find a very specific piece of information very quickly.
High security through legal practice software
Now, we all know that security and privacy are not a joke in the world of legal practice. Disclosing your client’s private information intentionally or otherwise will end your business, no questions asked. Having an insecure document system puts you in a position, where clients cannot trust you. Therefore any decent DMS needs to have multiple levels of security as well as document reduction backup.
Furthermore, having an advanced digital security lets law firms perform audit more efficiently. All the questions like who made changes to the file and when? Who emailed it and to whom did it go? Knowing that, allows you to comply with internal and external regulations.
Cloud technology allows seamless collaboration
If you are running a law firm, chances are good that your employees cannot be at the office at all times and therefore don’t have access to documents. And sending files via email is one of the highest security risks you can take. Document management program will give you alternatives for a secure client and employee communications.
DMS can be set up to require authentication of the recipient to retrieve any document. By using a cloud-based portal solution, you can exchange and collaborate on documents quick, inexpensive, easy, and safe.
Automated time and billing with case-management software
One of the problems that many law firms face is billing overtime hours since lawyers spend sleepless nights going through all the case information and strategizing. On average, any lawyer in the US spends over 8 hours a month on administrative and non-billable tasks. Case management solution integrated with DMS in a single IT infrastructure can significantly reduce the loss of valuable time and convert it into billable hours.
Why Choose Custom Solution?
There are many ready out-of-box solutions out on the market that are aimed at helping law firms to better manage their document assets as well as improve overall management process. However, such software very often proves itself to be inefficient, for a couple of reasons.
- First, small and mid-size law firms are usually very sector-oriented. Meaning, that they focus on a specific judicial field such as criminal justice, insurance, taxes and so on. Because the judicial system is so vast, law firms have to focus on a very specific part of it. And these different parts have their own set of regulations and specific requirements. So, you either would have to look for a software that was built for your practice or utilize a sub-optimal technology.
- Second reason. Depending on your country of operation, the law which you practice would be very different, which leads again to either endless search for a very specific solution or using something that may be not coherent with laws of your country.
That is why we at Intechcore are specializing in the development of DMS and case management systems for law firms and corporate legal departments. Our software solutions are built specifically to comply with specific regulations requested and to facilitate your existing assets, improving overall productivity and creating a cost-efficient IT infrastructure.
