Migrating Systems From One Platform To Another

This was the topic of my December 2012 article in Law Technology News.  The article discusses th do's and don'ts of moving case management tracking system data from one technology to another. 

To see the actual article, please click here.

CaseEnsemble FAQ

Q. Can CaseEnsemble be used to create a complex case management tracking system?

A. Yes. Our extranet is used regularly to manage large, nationwide litigations. We assist clients in the tracking of legal matters, settlement data, defense fees, trial calendars, insurance claim reports, the storage of litigation related documents such as complaints, medical reports, dismissals and settlement agreements, and many other types of data.

Q. Can CaseEnsemble support the creation of a repository of legal documents?

A. Yes. Our extranet is used regularly to host litigation repositories. We store information securely so other law firms, corporate law departments, experts and other authorized parties can work with the documents they need to access. Access is controlled pursuant to each client's requirements.

Q. Can the extranet be customized to be consistent with a law firm or company's public materials and website?

A. Yes. We have the ability to integrate a clients logo and text in our systems. We also have the ability to import full HTML into our main landing page to provide maximum flexibility in this area to our clients.

Q. Can I limit the view of extranet data, reports and functionality available for different classes of system users?

A. Yes. You can determine what extranet tools you wish to make available for your clients on a case by case basis. You may wish to make all features available to some clients; for others, only a few. You have complete control, and you have the flexibility to change feature availability as client needs change.

Q. What types of legal groups benefit from using CaseEnsemble?

A. Any group who wants to work online, organize their data and documents, and share work product in a collaborative manner to promote efficiency can benefit from legal extranet technologies.

Q. Can CaseEnsemble be used to support legal processes requiring workflow engines?

A. Absolutely. We often assist clients in projects where local counsel submit information into a centralized system and the system's workflow engine then shoots out email prompts to the next individual in the workflow process to alert them that their attention is required on a record. We also provide functionality to produce email reminders and ticklers to individuals to help avoid bottlenecks and assist in the project management of a business process.

Q. Can CaseEnsemble be used to track and manage the effectiveness of legal business partners such as expert witnesses and EDD vendors?

A. Yes. We have several systems deployments and templates to help practice groups with needs of this nature.

Q. How secure is data loaded into CaseEnsemble?

A. Very secure. We run our applications in a world class data center with state-of-the-art data center infrastructure including power generators, UPS, cooling system, multi-level security checks, and pre-action fire suppression system. Your servers will be protected from power outages, high temperatures, and fire. Services include locked cages, replication of data to multiple locations and intrusion detection. In addition, the extranet employs granular security within each site, enabling you to assign roles and privileges to users granting them access only to the information they need to see and work with. We also maintain audit logs to monitor the data updates and actions users take on your data. All communications between extranet users are encrypted.

Q. What is the turnaround time to create a legal extranet system?

A. A new collaboration area can be created very quickly. Same day service is the norm, not the exception.

Ease of use

When designing (or selecting) a legal extranet, be sure it is easy to use. If it is not easy to use, it will not be used.

How is that statement "make it easy to use" defined?

Make all of the screens consistent in their presentation. Be sure all the system navigation menus are deployed and displayed in a consistent manner. Make the text readable -- no 6 point fonts or crazy colors. Display only a reasonable amount of information on each screen - too much information can be overwhelming for people to process -- especially those who might be accessing your system on an iPad or smart phone.

From a technology standpoint, use technologies that will work on everybody's internet browser (there is nothing system clients hate more than to have to download internet plug-ins) just to get something to work. Consider cool toolsets like jQuery to provide advanced functionality to users on a thin client.

And, select technologies that will allow your clients to load large volumes of information (no flat file databases, no other obvious size constraints) so large litigation support projects can be handled by the legal extranet.

Extranet Case Management

Extranets can be a terrific way for corporate law departments to track case management information. They can, if desired, outsource some or all of the data maintenance with respect to their litigations to the outside counsel managing and litigating the matters. This way, when various individuals need to know the status of a case, since the data maintenance is done by those closest to the case and in a timely manner, the case management information is available to anyone who needs to access it.

Extranet - Build vs. Buy

A number of questions are often asked about the financial returns of extranets and client workspaces, how to decide on building vs. buying a system, etc. This posting and future postings will attempt to answer some of those questions

Should one build or buy an extranet system?

Assess your law firm's internal expertise.

It is critical to access the expertise level of your law firm in building applications from the ground-up, if you are considering doing so. The skill sets required to implement packaged software vs. programming new systems are fundamentally different. To build new software, you need, among other things, a software development lifecycle methodology, strong project managers to develop requirements and translate them into functional specifications programmers can work from, strong programmers obviously, and a strong database analyst to assist in both data structure design and supporting a production application.

For extranets, one also needs experts in obtaining SSL certificates, setting up an extranet zone, and web-server management.

In my experience working with law firms and their technical departments, the trend I observe is a very strong competency in supporting networks, telecom, implementing litigation support and office productivity software, and security.... but less so in applications development. So, in my opinion, I think for the most part law firms are better served, if they are starting from scratch, looking at external alternatives.

This opinion is somewhat dependent on expected system usage and how high usage might tilt the analysis (when looking at this topic from a ROI or cost/benefit perspective), and that will be the topic of a future posting on this blog.

Litigation task management

One useful application of internet-based legal technology is to deliver a tool allowing many law firms working on a case to manage the tasks associated with a case. If a complaint needs to be answered, depositions need to be taken, interview need to be conducted, analysis needs to be completed -- all related to tens or hundreds of cases -- tracking who is supposed to do what (and when it needs to be done and if it is done) can be a daunting task.

However, that being said, it is an important task. During the management of a large, nationwide litigation, it is vitally important that cases and litigations are properly managed, that the initial demand is tracked, the settlement negotiations are properly overseen, that any requests or movement towards arbitrition is watched over, that the discovery process proceeds as it should, that all appropriate motions are managed and tracked, that one properly prepares for a pre-trial conference, and that all pre-trial tasks are properly planned for and executed.

Legal extranets or law firm extranets commonly deliver a function which allows tasks to be tracked, assigned to individuals, assigned a status (like complete, in process, or incomplete), and be given a priority. For large litigations where many firms are involved, legal extranets can be a useful way to oversee the completion of all requisite task associated with a block of related litigations.

Document Libraries

Client workspaces and legal extranets are ideal locations to post litigation support document libraries.

Why?

Data can be added by any party - authorized law firms or clients. Or, you can constrain entry to authorized individuals and prevent data manipulation by certain team members.

Data can be easily added - there no longer any reliance on IT professionals to post up information which is no longer timely by the time it is posted to the site. And this includes data or virtually any type of attached file.

And, assuming the legal extranet technology is a robust and modern relational database package, these systems can easily hold thousands of documents totaling many GB's of data.

Legal extranets also facilitate litigation support by allowing full text searching of exhibits and posted documents. And, of course, documents can be searched by assigned keywords or by the title of the document.

There really is no need in today's technology world to email CD's back and forth or to use cumbersome virtual private networks or other methods of sharing data. On-line, client workspaces containing case management data, trial exhibits, discovery documents, depositions, transcripts, manuals, memos, etc.. are far more effective and convenient methods of posting up contact for collaborative use between law firms and clients. It is wise to consider using robust litigation support systems such as these to host and publish large litigation document libraries.

Auto-complete

jQuery has a very nice auto-complete element of code --- implementing this can really help out with assisting your clients in making sure data is entered faster and in a more consistent manner.

Adjusting the extranet GUI

When building a legal extranet, one would be wise to develop functionality which allows the administrator to alter the user interface. Some clients want large text, some want small text. Some want headings over sections, others do not. You'll definitely want to ability to place a client logo on a law firm extranet. We even have clients who request specific fonts or other variations in layout which are not closely aligned with the basic functionality of the system.

And, most notably, these types of request are often more important to a client than some of the basic functionality of a system (adding/removing fields, etc.).

One can debate which of these two types of changes are more important to the business, but the moral of the story is to build a system with some elements of flexibility in the user interface and don't hard code or embed all of the GUI settings within the application code.  If you can do that, the likelihood for user acceptance of the system can increase dramatically.

Going Green!

Xerdict completed a server farm upgrade which doubled processing power and storage available to our clients, while also reducing power consumption and our carbon footprint by 40%. A true win-win for all.

Building for different browsers

Just a quick reminder that it is very important when building web-based systems and legal extranets to be sure that they can be used by a broad cross-section of internet users.

Some basic tips are:

• Test your application to confirm it operates within both Internet Explorer and Firefox (not to mention Google Chrome and Safari).


• Be sure it works back a few browser revisions ago (e.g. not all users will have the latest versions of all browsers.


• Try to avoid having your application require browser plug-ins (whenever possible).

Legal Extranet Security Considerations

Security settings and methods are critically important in the area of deploying client extranets. Here are some of the "basics".

Firstly, we expose extranets both on the internet and intranet. Therefore, it is necessary to protect the data with an SSL certificate so that any data flowing over the internet is appropriately encrypted.

Within your application itself, there are several dimensions to consider. Some of the more important areas are:

- The type of access you will grant to various types of data (submit, modify, delete). Ideally, the access levels can vary by entity type (cases, documents, calendar events, etc.).

- The creation of a set of system privileges (to grant access to see various types of functionality) and a set of corresponding roles granting different sets of privileges. The system roles should correlate to functional roles within a law firm and clients of the law firm. To cite a primitive example, one might consider creating roles for Administrators, Staff Members, Staff Attorneys, Partners and Clients, each with a different set of system privileges (depending on the nature of work they need to do in the extranet).

- Visibility to collections of data must also be protected. For example, to cite another primitive example, some workers in a law firm need access to data from Client A, others to date from Client B, and others still require access to both Client A and Client B's data. Clients A and B obviously may not be granted access to each other's data.

Using the internet in the practice of law

Here are some examples of how a well constructed collaboration tool and technology which can be rapidly deployed via the internet can help improve the efficiency of case and litigation management while also helping a law firm foster a closer relationship with clients and improve client service and productivity.

- Setting up a case calendar (trials, depositions, conferences, etc) up for a client and partner law firms to access and contribute to, making the information live and current and more useable.

- Setting up a case management are to track and manage the status of all the cases/plaintiffs in a litigation, making this information available to clients in a live, interactive manner, rendering obsolete the monthly status report and improving client service by providing live and current information 7 x 24.

- Setting up a cost tracking mechanism to track costs (settlement, legal fees& expenses, etc.) for the purpose of litigation management as well as for the purpose of assisting clients recover litigation costs from their insurers when possible.

- Development of litigation-related databases and document depositories for clients, in areas such as the following (the storage of company contracts, the storage of images, the storage of discovery documentation/locations), and providing client access or remote office access to these databases.

Ten Great Reasons To Use Legal Extranets

1) For corporate law departments, this is a great way to have on-line access to the status of your cases, legal documents or case/trial calendars.

2) Legal collaboration systems provide anytime, anywhere access to case information and documents, wherever an Internet connection is available.

3) This is a turnkey (Application Service Provider or ASP) solution, there are no servers to set up and there is virtually no technical assistance required to set up a new collaboration system.

4) Collaboration systems can track many things -- cases, litigations, practice support projects, vendors, budgets, etc....

5) Easy tracking and documentation of system updates and other data activity.

6) For law firms, this is a great way to provide incremental services to clients.

7) Sophisticated security and data permission modules, so you can specifically control who has access to various types of data.

8) Every collaboration system is highly customizable and can be individually updated so that the feature set and graphics are set up in a manner consistent with the law firms and clients using this system.

9) These systems are delivered with user-configurable reporting modules providing reports which can be output on the screen, in spreadsheet format or in PDF format, providing many ways to report on and distribute your data.

10) Collaboration systems help you work more productively with your business partners !!