Post by Braz Pereira, muchBeta’s Chief Commercial Officer:

From its genesis LawRD was devised in close proximity to law firms’ reality, so that their performance and ease of use needs are met.

During the stage of sorting procedures and requirements, the law professionals we’ve consulted were unanimous on the growing level of demand from their clients, regarding client support and on updating them on their matters.

More and more, clients want be informed and updated on the development and what’s being done in defense of their interests. To fulfill such legitimate yearning, they usually contact directly the lawyers or firms they’ve contracted. To keep their trust and satisfaction, one has to display professionalism, control over the matters and the ability to answer issues such as dealines, tasks undertaken, fees and payments.

With this reality in mind, we aim to ease the work of those who have the responsability of keeping updated and supporting clients, enabling, from a simple Internet connection, data related to any given matter thus allowing them answering, on the fly, to most questions clients ask.

Once the Matter is clicked on, the matter in question  selected, the following page opens up:

Besides the header showing the client’s contacts and matter ’s generic info, it is possible to consult immediately reports on: money, time, productivity and profitability. These provide for an overview and immediate grip on the matter’s status.

Questions on tasks already executed or billing sheets, can be answered through the Time tab, wherein one can find about: who, when and what!

Any doubts on matter expenses, a click on Expenses gives way to seeing all expenses, sorting the ones pending on approval, the ones already approved and the ones that have been billed:

The Comments tab gives access to comments submitted by the team working on that matter and other documents related to it:

The Events tab presents dates and events with significance to the matter:

The Billing tab adresses billing sheets, with the matter’s history and the billing sheets already issued:

Gathering all data concerning a matter in a single place, gives way to respond, on the fly, to the majority of concerns by clients, thus conveying professionalism, control over the matters, transparency, service quality and aiming the client’s satisfaction.  This approach ranks high on LawRD’s users degree of satisfaction, namely those who deal directly with client support.

Transcription of an original post by Rui Amores, lawyer and partner at RA Law Office, from the Inconfidencias (content in Portuguese only) blog:

“The legal practice is the worst managed and most productivity challenged of all practices, probably. I’m talking about Portuguese legal practice, a small one, with little resources, few employees: solo practitioners, so to speak. It may not sound pleasant that the legal practice is not just of public interest but a livelihood for many who must support their families, pay for their children’s education, pay the bills, i.e. the  sort of needs that all PEOPLE have to face.

At times it seems to be a heresy, a gross fault when a law firm is profitable, well run and squanders neither  time nor money. It should always be available and willing to spend mercifully time away to whom may want to take advantage from us, may they be clients who happen to have forgotten their wallets at home and so not paying for the consultation, or simply the courts and Judges always counting on us to be at their service.

Well, it doesn’t have to be so. It can not be so. A law firm has to know:

• How many clients it has;
• How to contact them swiftly;
• The time spent on each task;
• Expenses and costs per matter;
• The matters there are per client;
• What is the billing at any given moment.

Computers are great and effective when assessing on the above goals, Up until recently we were dependent on software that generally was little user friendly; expensive since there was the need for a license for each user; it had to be installed on our computer or it  had to run on an intranet, which seldom happens in law firms.

On the other hand, law firm management software overlooked the fact that at this day and age, law practice happens not only in the office, as well as in the court houses, state buildings and generally wherever clients have their interests located. Adding to this, there is the fact that laptops are taking the place of the old pen and paper at courts lounges and court rooms.

Not long ago, it came to light in Portugal, a law firm management system that meets all these needs, namely, accessing at anytime and from anywhere an online platform and therein log everything that has been done for a client. LawRD, that is the name of such a platform that provides the answers to the issues afore described. It is quite worthy to give it a try for 30 days, completely free.

I did and I’m enjoying it.

If you want to know more on the system’s features and potential watch this video:”

CRM – Customer Relationship Management. Some professionals in the legal area are acquainted to this notion which is increasingly standard in legal management systems.

In the IT field there is a growing care for technology and clients,for management of clients data in order to answer them back, to expand possibilities to close deals, etc. To speak clearly, a CRM system can be very effective for keeping in check which clients you have already proposed any legal service to, whether a client was one of yours long time ago and no longer is, etc. CRM has many control and management features for its users.

Nowadays there is a plethora of social networks: Plaxo, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Ning and many more. With that in mind, the IT people are developing CRM focused on social networks, which means we will be able to able to keep up with what is being written about us on the web, to answer to social networks surveys, i.e. to reinforce our interaction with our clients.

What is the upside of that?

Social networks are characterized by a function to which lawyers aren´t much accustomed to: clients praise,quarrel, discuss and ‘do the laundry’ on social networks. With this, their interaction  with lawyers is wider than it used to be. This leads to some of them being tagged as bad, sloppy and other ‘qualities’, throughout the web. While some are considering law suites for on line slandering, others are looking elsewhere for a new lawyer, after pondering.

Taking in consideration this factor of instant spread, interconnection and web organization, the need for a  CRM integrated with social networks is an important and interesting reality.

Do you use CRM in your practice?
Do you  professionally or personally use social networks?
How do you interact with your clients?
How many of your clients have never contacted again since the conclusion of their actions?
Do you know what legal services have you proposed to any one of your clients?

If you have no answers to these questions and more importantly, if you don´t know how to start answering them, I suggest you begin to interact with your clients by taking on a legal management CRM integrated system.

Picture this: if your dentist contacts you by surprise because its been 6 months since your last cleansing, you’ll feel happy even if you don’t take on the invitation. However if they only contact to charge you for the latest root canal you had, you feel like looking for a different dentist. The same goes for lawyers.

Use over and over again CRM to manage clients, partners and deals. The growth of your practice and income will appreciate it.

Today’s post takes its title from a 1984 movie: 2010 - The year we make contact the sequel of 2001- A space odissey.

Looking back on 2009, I find it a fruitful year regarding the legal and entrepreneurial areas. We had a lot of technological developments, more lawyers are facing their practices as companies, more management, technology and quality are embedding the judicial minds. This was a year of big legal marketing, social networks and strategic alliances.

And what has 2010 in store for us? Dreams, longings, wishes and mostly work.

Yes, I wish you dream a lot, for dreams feed our hope and bring happiness from the smallest thing, from the minimum acomplishment, from what is palpable.

May your wishes come true. Hope for good things and they will come true.

May the yearning fill your life. Hope for happiness, love, friendship, endearment and after dreaming, thinking and whishing, do the main thing: work. May work guide your path in 2010. Not just in the professional acomplishment sense. Work as a verb of construction. Work as a will to change. Work as a new way to see the world.

I think that the movie predicted legal practice and entrepreneurship in 2010.The legalpractice and its marketing, as well as entrepeneurs are totally interconnectd through this word: contacts. This is how networks emerge, be they virtual or face-to-face. This is how people trust each other. This is the way to hire a professional.

Everything is contacts! Not the contact per se, but the display of trust, i.e. forwarding. Learn that forwarding is as important and should be as criterious as establishing contacts is. When you forward a contact, you commit your name, your good name and you give credibility.

Learning to deal with social networks is key for 2010. It is not enough to be connected and have thousands of followers on twitter, facebook or plaxo. Be connected and interact with this audience.

2010 will be the year we will make contact.

Adding to the new website and demo account, during this Fall 2009 other new features are now enriching LawRD. Such an upgrade results from our users community feedback, to whom we are thankful. The improvements are as follows:

• Events: from now on, it is possible to relate events to contacts and matters, by logging on LawRD important dates referring to actions and tasks needed to be acomplished. Such events are either public or private, in the latter case, they will be available only to whoever did add them.
  

• Setting fees per lawyer on matters: up until now, LawRD enabled billing matters accordingly to each intervening lawyer fee. Now, it is possible to set for any given matter, other fees different from the ones preset per lawyer.
  

  When setting up a matter´s team, LawRD will display the standard fees preset on each lawyer’s file, in case the fee is other than the preset one, just change it.
  

• Setting up a success fee in a flat fee matter: by the time a new matter is added, this value is a forecast which can be adjusted when the billing sheet is issued.
  

• Adding a new type of matter within the matter adding assistant: when adding a new matter, if it doesn´t match any of the existing types, now, one can create a new type without needing to close the matter assistant.
  

• The timesheet tab in Matter displays costs and fees columns: this makes way for a easier check on a matter profitability. At any time it is possible to have a grasp on the matter billing potential (Fee column) and the assigned lawyer internal costs (Costs column).
  

• Deleting contacts and matters: this new feature allows to delete unintended duplication of matters and contacts that usually occur during the early usage of LawRD.
  This feature is available, by default, to users on the Administrator and Manager profiles ( the latter can delete only the matters he/she manages and no one else’s) , but its settings can be changed by altering profiles:
  

• Billing sheet deduction row: when issuing a billing sheet there’s the possibility of mentioning a deduction to the total amount.
  

• New billing sheet PDF layout: the PDF billing sheet layout has been upgraded to a nicer look.
  

• Relating users to matters via users tab: that will make it simpler to relate lawyers to the firm matters which are logged in LawRD. Whenever a lawyer is related to a matter, Lawrd will email her/him notifying of that.
  

• Timesheet status: timesheets display now the following different status:
  No tasks: timesheet open by the user with no tasks logged in yet;
  Clear: timesheet open by the user wherein tasks have been logged but not yet approved
  To approve: meaning that the timesheet was sent for approval, but it hasn´t been reviewed and approved yet. In this instance there is the need for the user supposed to approve it to do so;
  Closed: timesheet approved.
  

• Searching through comments on matters and contacts:
  

• Self-suggesting tags: when adding tags, LawRD will suggest tags already added by users.
  

Other issues and glitches reported since the Summer 2009 upgrading are now corrected, e.g. retainers, reports and budget fee matters.

2010 will bring new developments, so we invite everyone interested in LawRD to keep posted on this blog. Thus, subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

LawRD is always evolving so it can meet our clients demands. One of the advantages of SaaS applications is that as soons as updates are implemented they are immediately available to LawRD’s users.

Adding comments is a newly implemented feature - such comments can be either public or private and the status can be altered at any time - there is the possibility of attaching files to Contact and Matters.

The image below depicts a row of comments on a contact:

The feature works exactly the same way on Matters. To add a comment just choose that tab within Matters:

The comment must have a ‘category’ and it is up to the manager of the system to define the types of categories on LawRD settings:

Once the text is written, its status must be defined, i.e. public or private and attach a file (optional). Just click on ‘Save’ and the comment is added:

If contacts are the starting point for LawRD, matters are the roads where data runs through. It is because a matter is related with a client that lawyers spend working hours and make expenses which later, may or may not be billed to the client.

LawRD has implemented this data register environment, to the purpose of outputing reports that answer to simple questions such as to determine whether a matter is profitable or not. LawRD - Reports on Demand, says it all!

The picture below depicts a screenshot of Matters:

LawRD presents to the user all matters wherein he/she intervenes either as manager (user’s initials show up in a red circle) or a resource (initials shown in a blue rectangle).

All matters are associated with contacts defined as clients. The matter General Internal Matters (depicted in a green rectangle) is the only exception. This particular matter is reserved for the office using LawRD to register time and costs which will not be billed to clients (e.g.  time spent on internal affairs).

The system will present set-by-step tips to add a new Matter:

• Go the Matter tab and click on:
  
• Choose an existing client:
  
• If that client already has matters added, LawRD will display a list for you to check whether the matter you are about to add is in the system or not:
  
  In case it isn´t, just click on ‘It’s not. Create a new one’ and proceed:
  
• Add who will be in charge of this matter (manager):
  
• Set the kick-off date:
  
• Who’s related to this matter. At this stage it is selected who will work on this matter and later register time and expenses. It’s always possible to add new users:
  
• Adding others associated to the matter. All sorts of contacts can be added to the matter. People working at a company that  is a client and who we communicate with, solicitors and other party lawyers, for instance, can be added here:
  
• Create the new matter:
   
  LawRD will display a screen with a header summing up the new matter’s data:
  

Contacts are the stepping stone to LawRD just as they are to any law firm.

The business competition dynamics, the present crisis context and the broadening profile of those who recur to law expertise, demand for a wider reception from law firms. Clients seek for more information and to stay informed. Establishing a close and trustworthy connection to one’s lawyer becomes pivotal for clients holding fidelity to a law firm.

Given that Customer Relationship Management and the web of contacts of each one and all of those looking for judicial counseling is hard work and requires organizing, LawRD aims to be the tool for Contacts Management.

LawRD hosts three types of contacts:

• Clients;
• System users (registered LawRD users);
• Other contacts.

Clients, whether companies or individual, have a matter associated to them. A team or a single element report costs and time spent working on that matter.

Keeping up with a  matter or a client is usually dependent to the management a web of contacts:  providers,  other lawyers, state offices, solicitors, instituitions, relatives, other parties, etc. For this, LawRD enables connecting contacts, clients and matters thus optimizing all contacts management .  

Users may also manage their personal contacts on LawRD (family, children’s school, gym, restaurants, insurance agents, bank account manager, etc), though they should  not  share that information.

Adding a Person or Company contact is easy:

• Go to the Contacts tab and click on:
  
• Choose whether the new contact is a Person or a Company:
  
  In this example, the new contact is a Company.

• By default, the added Company is not a client:
  
  To turn the added Company contact into a client one, check the ‘Is this a client ?’ box and fill in the company data:
  
  When contacts  are clients they are shared by all users of the system. All other contacts can be private or shared by chosen users.

• Pasting a photo to a client: this option allows for a faster identification of the contact. When the contact is a company, a logo can be used ( usually can be downloaded from the company´s site). When it is a Person, a photo can be searched in places such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

• Click on ‘Save’ and a new contact is added: