Serving our clients requires investments in the latest law firm technology and a staff that knows the ins-and-outs of its application.  Some of the complex litigations in which we are engaged require the management of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, deposition transcripts, and pleadings.  As the practice of law continues to move away from paper and toward digitization, there is a new emphasis on the use of software applications to organize and identify case-critical information while providing maximum value to our clients.  For a lawyer engaged in this type of practice, understanding data-mining can be as important to success as understanding a contract.

One of the case organizational tools which we employ is CaseMap, a software application that manages a case’s facts and issues.  The program links together the legal issues in a case with the facts that support those issues and the witnesses and exhibits which will be utilized to prove up those facts at trial.  With a click you can pull up all the case facts which pertain to a category of damages or to one aspect of the incident.  In a simple slip-and-fall, this might be easily enough done in your head but in cases with dozens of legal issues and thousands of facts, using this type of technology allows us to give our clients top-flight representation.

Managing legal issues and case facts are not all a law firm is about, however.  Another important piece of technology at work in the office is TimeMatters.  Unlike CaseMap, which is focused on the issues at play in a lawsuit, TimeMatters is about managing the practice on a more removed level.  Every pleading or piece of correspondence that enters or leaves the office – whether through e-mail or the letter carrier – is electronically entered into the program and tied to the specific case to which it relates.  In this one application, the documents, billing, and client information for a case would all be available from the general entry. 

Our office has become more efficient and effective by embracing these systems and fostering an attitude that rewards innovative use and application of technology in the practice – and who doesn’t want their lawyer more efficient and more effective?