Peer to Peer Magazine

82 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | FALL 2016 How can busy lawyers maintain laser-focus on their clients without being distracted by the administrative minutiae of the case? The answer is efficient matter management. In today's fiercely competitive financial climate in which law firms face increasing pressure to work more efficiently and cost- effectively to exceed the expectations of clients, a firm or department's matter management system tailored to its needs and environment can mean the difference between profits and loss. To explore this topic further, we asked four of your ILTA peers to talk about how their firm or legal department manages matters. What tools does your team rely on for matter management? Cindy (Midsize Firm): We use SharePoint, Box and a document management system, and we maintain a flexible approach that allows our practices to select the tool that best suits the needs of our clients. As an example, our public finance group manages every closing in Box so they can quickly and easily share documents with all parties. Our lawyers love that it's easy to use and that they have great mobile access. Chris (Large Firm): We use SharePoint, and that interface is shared with the entire firm. We also use Excel; in specific maer arrangements, Excel spreadsheets will reside within the client maer in the document management system. The bigger piece we utilize is business intelligence through a Sisense dashboard, which analyzes our e-discovery resources being used throughout the firm through different perspectives. Mike (Small Firm): Since 2011, we've primarily used LawBase for calendaring, docketing and case management. It keeps deadlines on track and provides a basic set of documents to lawyers. We selected this soware primarily because of its flexibility and reputation. Both are important in my role as sole technology provider and surveyor of potential soware. Vanessa (Law Department): We implemented E-Council a lile over a year ago, with two tools that support it: » AnalysisCenter gives us a more robust way to extract information out of our maer management system. We can also report on it in different and more creative ways. » Smartlink allows us to build custom rules and prevent certain actions on maers. We also take advantage of rules related to invoice management. Managing Maers Effectively ASK THE EXPERT Managing Matters Effectively LISTEN TO EACH PERSON'S INTERVIEW: iltanet.org/recordings

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