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.

Deposition Schedules

Using law firm client workspaces or legal extranets for the purpose of publishing schedules of depositions is a excellent use of this technology. It enables all parties to see the upcoming depositions (where, when, what time, etc..) and, if desired, the legal extranet could also post the transcriptions of the depositions to all system users or a subset of the legal extranet system users.

Many other types of events, like client meetings, updates, trial dates, court appearances, hearings, etc... can also be posted in a collaboration calendar.

This is a somewhat small or narrow use of the entire set of available legal extranet functionality, but in many litigations it is a very helpful way of publishing what often is a very dynamic schedule.

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 !!

Expert Witness Areas

Legal extranets can serve as good areas for attorneys and expert witnesses to share information. There is no need to store documents electronically on the servers of the attorney reviewing the document, all they need to do is access the document which is stored on a server which is not managed by the attorney's law firm or company. This, potentially, may prove to be an advantageous configuration for all parties involved.

These types of systems also allow one to track the status of one or several experts (are they currently engaged with a client and if so in what way), attach files to the record about them (their CV, picture, examples of prior work, etc...) and track any other important data about each of the experts.

Outside Counsel Management

Legal extranets can help corporate counsel track the approved counsel working on a litigation. And, they can also track the list of approved timekeepers (both attorneys and staff) working on the litigation.

They also can provide the capability to distribute messages, via a bulletin board, to all outside firms working on a case. Also, these messages are not only distributed, but also can be stored in a repository so they are available for historical review as a sort of outside counsel policy manual for law firms working on a case on behalf of a client.

This management capability helps to manage and control the costs associated with a litigation, as well as helps to be sure the proper staff (and a consistent set of staff) are representing the client in their legal matter as per agreements reached when the client retained the law firm to represent them.

Innovative users for legal extranet technology

• Track and manage internal projects and priorities.
• Assist clients in managing workflow processes where requests and tasks need to be passed from person to person.
• Help with the plaintiff or site research process during discovery.
• Assist in the tracking of vendor performance, pricing and capabilties.
• Help distribute training and orientation materials to new employees.

Inside Counsel Article

Here is a link to an article in the November 2010 issue of Inside Counsel.

http://www.insidecounsel.com/Issues/2010/November-2010/Pages/Extranets-Cut-Costs-In-Law-Departments.aspx

Collaborative Case Management

Sharing case management information among many local counsel and clients is often difficult.

It is even more difficult to provide a common database tool that allows all appropriate parties to update litigation case management information that needs to be maintained based on information each respective party obtains.

Litigation support legal extranets help address this issue. These systems can be deployed in a manner that allows the appropriate data points for a litigation to be tracked, and so that appropriate counsel and client contacts can update the database as needed. Master, administrative type users are granted the ability to run standard reports which are distributed amongst appropriate staff. The same administrative type users maintain the picklist information available within the legal extranet.

Properly deployed and managed, legal extranet systems make all litigation case management information instantly available to all members of a litigation support team. And, the information is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of where one is at (e.g. there is no need to be in the office to access a local case management database containing this information).

Expert Witness Tracking

We recently completed updated some functionality on an interesting project to facilitate the tracking of expert witnesses. This tracking capability allows law firms and clients to understand the prior work product of expert witnesses as well as to be sure that prior work product is properly used and understood to ensure consistency and to reduce the likelihood of incurring redundant costs for securing the same opinion or same type of opinion multiple times.

The system which we implemented allowed us to track the basics of an expert witness (name, title, address, phone, email, etc.). We also developed functionality to post their resume. Additionally, we developed a method of posting up work product from the experts and associating each file to the case(s) and expert(s) who developed it. And, finally, we also built a method of tracking which experts worked on which case for our clients.

Uses of legal extranet technology in the risk management and insurance fields

Recently, we have noted a uptick in the number of uses of web-based collaboration technologies to assist in the tracking and management of matters related to the insurance industry. These uses include using these technologies to track the status of a legal matter, to track documents related to the cases, to maintain case calendars, and to help oversee other data related to the litigations or claims. The various document sets tracked in systems like this range from small document sets (perhaps only the initial claim and pleadings and other work product associated with a matter) to very large (complete sets of documents relating to all aspects of claims related to natural disasters emcompassing the claims of hundreds of major clients). It will be interesting to see if this trend continues and if the insurance area continues to be one which is utilizing web-based collaboration systems.

Web-Based Applications

Recently, there have been many interesting articles about the proiferation of web-based hosted applications for common, everyday use. There are many players in the market of providing on-line spreadsheets, work processors and presentation software. It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out in the world of managing legal and litigation data -- in a world where we all do on-line banking, manage our portfolios on-line, send emails using services like YAHOO, GOOGLE and others and where we soon might be creating all of our documents online and watching television online -- how soon will it be before we move more and more legal case management and document management applications out of technologies which require local installations, powerful PC hardware and a robust law firm intranet network (which is often a huge constraint to providing cross-office access to litigation data in multioffice law firms) into technologies which are common, hosted solution accessing in a secure and encrypted manner using the same internet backbone we use (or will soon use) for these other common, day-to-day activities.

CaseEnsemble PDF Reporting Capability

Xerdict recently developed a new reporting capability within the CaseEnsemble Collaboration System for use in all collaboration systems.

The new reporting capability allows CaseEnsemble to produce any report generated by the system " Query Builder" in a configurable PDF format. To help properly format the reports, CaseEnsemble allows the system users and clients to define the report characteristics such as the report font, font size, and page size and orientation in the PDF file (prior to printing/saving/emailing the PDF file). This new feature, which adds to the existing CaseEnsemble functionality allowing clients to either view the report on the screen or export report contents to an Excel file, greatly improves CaseEnsemble clients's ability to save Case Management and other types of system reports in a useful and attractive format appropriate for printing or emailing to clients. This capability is particularily useful for those case management applications that require periodic reports (weekly, monthly, quarterly) to be sent to clients.

Business Issues Related To Legal Extranets

Here are a few quick items to consider if you are a law firm and considering putting up a legal extranet system for your clients and if you, for some reason, would not want to contract with the Xerdict Group for your extranet needs ! :)

• Have you considered the need for business insurance.
• Do you have a standard contact you wish to have clients enter into so that issues such as software warranties, data security, indemnification, etc.. are clearly defined.
• Is your legal extranet system name trademarked and source code copyrighted?
• Do you have a privacy policy to govern the data which will be stored on your system?
• Do you have a service level agreement with your clients?
• Do you feel confident that you have the appropriate support structure in place with respect to client support, technical support, customer service.
• Do you have appropriate change management system in place to help you govern the various changes in the various different implementations you will ultimately be delivering to your clients.
• Do you have a structure and technology in place which will allow you to do sales demonstrations and other pre-sales work?
• Do you have a sense of how (or if) you will be recapturing the costs of the system (billing your clients).
• Do you have a methodology for storing and managing your application source code?
• Do you have appropriate backup mechanisms and failover procedures and processes put into place?

These are all items to consider, perhaps some are not applicable to you but I would expect most should be application for most firms.