Ten Things to Look for When Choosing a Matter Management Systems System
1. Centralized database
Documents related to the matter are stored centrally in a secure database. These documents can include emails, correspondence, agendas, forms and responses.. View all the documents related to a matter based on a certain standard; all the documents associated with a particular contact. Traditional media can be handled by the system once scanned in.
2. Email integration
Stay on top of your inbox and ensuring that the matter information is also complete through email integration (packages support generally include Outlook, Lotus Notes etc).
3. Time efficiency
Save time on creation and management of documents through the use of templates and workflows. Avoid the unnecessary overheads of typing details in every time through pre-populated templates.
4. Team consistency
Working practice consistency can be created through templates and workflows. {Appropriate automation to free professionals from background tasks – three different levels of workflow provide the opportunity for work to be heavily controlled or largely free-flowing|Fee-earning professionals don’t need to spend time on background tasks. Build carefully proscribed workflows will derive improved efficiencies.. A good Matter Mangement system will use work flow to automate tasks so saving the time of expensive legal professionals..
5. Keep on top of key dates and events
Matter management software can be fully integrated with your calandar system. Supporting:
- Automatic scheduling of required team members
- Resources scheduling
- Event scheduling
6. Enhance teamwork
Professional teams often require the ability to share a library of intellectual capital including best practices, industry guidelines, regulations or other standard documents.
7. Information Management
Automated user-defined reporting. In addition to a set of standard reports. Allow user-configurable reporting to suit different organisational needs. Matter management software packages normally have a function to allow the scheduling of routine reports.
8. Easier client care.
Deliver an organisation-wide, shared contact database to aid collaboration and ensure that team members have access to the very latest information. Contact details can be automatically inserted appropriately into precedents. It is also easy to determine all the files and cases associated with a particular contact at any one time to assess whether there are any conflicts or areas of risk.
9. Compliance and Records Management
It is an imperative under today’s legal requirements that records are retained and secured for future discovery and disclosure requirements. Internal and external auditing of matters and cases is simplified.
10. Data backup
Data is so vital that robust back up procedure must always be ensured. The general rule being that the data must be held in three geographically disparate places before it can be regarded as being safe
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