It gave us a real opportunity to see how we operate and how we want to operate. Legal Files is great.
Jefferson County, New York, and Legal Files Software, Inc. have successfully implemented a new legal case management system for the County Attorney’s Office. Legal Files Software, which provided the attorney office software licenses and related implementation services including system installation assistance and training, worked with the County Attorney Office to configure the system to meet the Office’s unique and extensive needs.
“Our Office provides many different kinds of legal services from general counsel/municipal law, contract review and preparation to labor relations, juvenile delinquency hearings, property tax foreclosures, land use issues and much more. Our office works directly with the Jefferson County Board of Legislators, the County Administrator, and the various departments, boards and commissions of County government,” Senior Assistant County Attorney Kari K. Fahrenbach said.
“To meet the needs of all those areas, we built a very extensive system,” Fahrenbach continued. “We ended up with 15 custom windows for all the different matter types; many of which incorporate automatic workflows that include dates and tasks. I loved the entire process. It gave us a real opportunity to see how we operate and how we want to operate. Legal Files is great.”
For some employees, Legal Files is the first legal case management system implemented for the Office. But for others, Legal Files is a replacement system. “We were using a system for our juvenile delinquency practice, but its calendar was clunky,” explains Fahrenbach. “There wasn’t an easy way to view a master calendar or calendars by case type. We appreciate that Legal Files gives us multiple ways to view the same event, whether it’s by user, team, group, case, etc. Plus, the old system didn’t synchronize with Outlook, so we had to re-enter events on our personal Outlook calendars and check two systems. Legal Files’ seamless integration with Outlook is awesome.”
County Attorney David Paulsen said Legal Files is also being used to organize and manage what he calls “mini” matters or issues. “I get handed folders or small pieces of paper all the time just walking through the building,” he said. “Legal Files gives us the ability to create individual files or general files by topic, so we can save all that information and nothing gets lost. It was easy to get buried by all that information, but now Legal Files provides us with a system that helps us organize, track and manage all of it.”