Law Firm Case Management

Overview

Law Firm Case Management Software

Developed in a working legal environment, Legal Files case management software for leading law firms has undergone thorough, hands-on testing using real-world applications. As a result, Legal Files has evolved into one of the finest and most robust legal practice management software available today.

Designed from a management prospective, Legal Files helps you see the big picture. Want to see case loads? The status of a case? Get a quick summary. Know in a glance what’s going on in a particular case. Obtain accurate statistics. Critical reports are at your fingertips. Need to view individual, group or firm-wide calendars? Legal Files offers significant strategic advantages to help you compete and succeed in today’s legal marketplace.

Because many firms can be very departmentalized, YOU can configure Legal Files, using non-technical tools built directly into the application, to meet the requirements of any department, office or location. What’s more, Legal Files is scalable, which means your organization will never outgrow Legal Files. Legal Files will be the last case management system you will ever have to license or learn.

As our technological leadership continues, Legal Files’ dedicated team of programmers and developers, trainers and legal technology consultants work closely with our customers to ensure that our legal practice management software continues to grow and develop, adapting to advances in technology as well as in the legal profession.

Features

Law firm case management

• One central location for all information related to each case
• Office-wide contact management, including duplicate checker
• Document assembly and management
• Pleadings index report
• Client update report
• File manager
• File notes, including alerts
• Built-in tools to create a standardized process for handling specific types of cases

Firm management

• Standard Management Dashboard Reports
• Automatic time capturing tools, including accounting links
• Multiple location management
• Custom menus and screens
• Task delegation and assignment tracking
• Team management
• Email management (Outlook, Lotus Notes, GroupWise or Google Mail)
• Phone messaging, mail tracking and message notification
• Optional app for the iPad® and iPhone®
• Activity summary
• Outcome tracking
• File security

Calendars, event and task management

• Calendars — firm-wide, group, individual
• Comprehensive in-box
• To-do’s, reminders and alerts with automatic notification
• Group and recurring scheduler
• Legal dates and deadlines calculator
• Time keeping and activity log
• Scheduling and docketing
• Court docketing
• Automated task scheduling

Benefits

Improve relationship management.
Use Legal Files Name Cards to store information on clients, prospective clients or any other party. The foundation of Legal Files, Name Cards serve as your firm-wide Rolodex. You can create a Name Card for attorneys, opposing counsel, witnesses, etc. The data on any person or company you have contact with is stored in one centralized location, making sure everyone has access to the most current information. You can also determine relationships and involvement with any case. When a change is made to a Name Card, it is automatically updated throughout Legal Files—wherever information from the Name Card is used.

Assemble and manage all your documents.
Legal Files is true document management—or it can link with your current document management system. Eliminate the need to retype the same documents. Create a template once, then use it again and again in different files. Or automatically generate a new document, merging the template and any data fields you choose. Conveniently stored and cataloged in the file they reference, documents are easy to search and retrieve. With our document management features, you have—at your fingertips—every document anyone has ever created in or copied into your Legal Files law office software.

Know the status of any case.
Need to know what’s going on with a particular case? Here’s one-button access to the information you need the most, regardless of where it resides in the file. Legal Files creates a report using any information you want, including the information you want to share with others. You have the option to print, email or fax the report. Going to court? Print the case information, toss it in your briefcase and take it with you.

Open cases in a snap.
If you deal with similar types of cases on a regular basis, Legal Files makes it a snap to create similar files without having to retype the same information. You create templates, controlling how files are created and helping you to open files even faster. Just choose the file type and the file template that determines the look and feel of the file menu. Plus, you also can relate parties to a file, assign users and their roles to the file, create teams, define the file setup, enter file facts and more—all from one place, all at one time.

Use a tickler system that follows your rules.
Ever been assigned to a case and didn’t find out until 10 days later? That’s true with some  enterprise legal management systems, but Legal Files creates an automated roadmap using a tickler system that follows the rules you establish. As a case progresses, Legal Files automatically assigns tasks or sends email. Triggers can be set to automatically notify you and others about changes to a file or to trigger another action, such as automatically sending a to-do/task or changing the file style or file menu. For example, you can set an automatic trigger to send email to all file users when the file status is closed or when a user is added or removed from a file.

Law Office Management Benefits

Support a virtual office.
Legal Files supports a virtual law office. Whether you’re at home or on the road, you have total access to your data. All your contacts, calendar appointments, task/to-do’s and email reside in Legal Files. Read, reply or forward email without leaving Legal Files. Save email to a file within Legal Files, and you have one place where all file related email is stored.

Link information from web sites directly to your files.
Our Web Windows feature helps you stay connected to other programs you use, your favorite Internet site or your own Intranet. With Web Windows, you can jump to any other software program you use from any Legal Files file. Or use Web Windows and our Time Keeper feature together to pop into Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw from your file. Do your research. Index your research directly to the file. Once you have completed your research, a record of the time it took is automatically generated and may be stored as part of your file.

Customize Legal Files for each department, each office, each location.
Do your data needs change? Create your own fields. Create your own menus. Create your own windows. No programming ability required—unlike some systems. Using just one program (won’t your IT department love that?), you can provide different functionality for each of your departments. Plus, every field you create—you can search, you can query, you can import into documents.

Leverage the team concept within your practice.
Does anyone ever leave your firm? Ever struggle with keeping track of case assignments or caseloads? Legal Files brings a true team concept to case and workflow management by sharing and integrating the varied responsibilities and work products of attorneys, legal assistants, administrators and staff within your practice. With Legal Files you have the option of automatically managing people as team members—as opposed to assigning people and their roles individually. So you can quickly assign, or reassign, a case to a group of people, monitoring caseloads—all with one stroke.

Track and monitor cases and users.
As a manager, you can schedule a meeting or appointment for one of your attorneys. You can keep track of assignments (something you can’t do in all case management programs) because Legal Files gives you the ability to monitor not just the status of cases, but users as well. Plus, Legal Files makes it possible to comprehensively view to-do’s—your own, someone else’s, those of a particular case or those of the entire firm!

Manage that email mess!
Do you need to find important email? Link email to a case? Share your email with others? With Legal Files, you can easily manage all your email, linking important client related messages to your case or file.

Legal Files offers extensive email integration (including Outlook, GroupWise, Lotus Notes and others) and intelligent profiling, so you can save email (and all those attachments!) to a client’s case, creating one place where all case-related communication is stored. One place for everything … that’s Legal Files.

Calendars, Time and Task Benefits

Rely on Manage My Day to keep you current.
Offering an expanded day-at-a-glance desktop view, Manage My Day includes a list of recently accessed files and your day’s calendar and to-do’s. You may click on any listed item to view the update window for that item, use the calendar to view another day’s calendar and to-do items, or open a file directly from the recently accessed file list.

A powerful feature of Manage My Day is the automatic notification system, which is called Heads Up. Legal Files allows repeated notification of due dates or tasks through Heads Up. Heads Up messaging automatically notifies users of different kinds of items on one screen so important information yet to be resolved is quickly brought to their attention.

Track all your appointments, tasks and important dates.
Never miss an appointment. Avoid scheduling conflicts. Create to-do’s. View your own calendar. Plus, it’s easy to see someone else’s calendar. With Legal Files, you have access to an individual calendar, case calendar, docket calendar and firm calendar. It’s quick and easy to enter calendar information (type of meeting, date, time, location, people involved, etc.) simply by choosing from customized pick lists. Schedule recurring appointments in one step.