Increased operational productivity by 50% for a leading law firm
A web application to simplify daily tasks and activities of employees
Client’s Industry
Legal services
Platforms
Web
Client background
The client is one of the most prominent IP law firms in Washington D.C., USA. With four decades of experience in Intellectual Property (IP) law, they specialize in the protection, transfer, and enforcement of IP Rights. With a team of 130 attorneys and 220 professionals, the client serves startups to Fortune 500 companies around the world. They have helped the world’s leading brands in protecting their IP Rights.
What was the objective of the client?
The client had to deal with hundreds of matters on a daily basis. To manage docket items, tasks, and correspondences of these matters; the timekeepers used a web-based application. This application was built using Microsoft SharePoint and was integrated with core systems like Thomson IP manager and CA FileSurf™. The users have been using this system to perform 4 major activities:
- Clearing Docket Items
- Performing QA over the cleared Docket Items
- Research on Matters
- Generate Reports
Old workflow system
The existing web application took too long to load. The loading time was close to 2 minutes. Under peak loads and for users with the large docket, the user had to wait 5 min for moving from one module to another.
It had very limited features and did not fulfill a breadth of use cases.
User persona definition was missing in every module which resulted into lack of personalization.
An inadequately designed UI/UX made the system workflow more complex to administer.
The software was based on outdated technologies and was difficult to maintain, update and enhance.
There was no reliable tracking system to check case dates and process deadlines, subject matter, and case documents.
Missing pieces
There were only four main modules, i.e. Docket Center, Matter Center, QA Center, and Report Center in the earlier application and three main modules i.e. Litigation Center, Dashboard and Projects section were completely missing that affected a majority of the users and resulted into slower processing of tasks and delayed deadlines.
How Credencys helped the client in achieving the objective?
To create a successful solution, it was paramount that Credencys first fully understood the client’s business domain, the different user personas, and the existing systems/application that they use to fulfill their day to day needs. To do so, we interviewed around 35-40 executives from different user groups and identified “how they use their current application to fulfill their work, what are the challenges that they face while using the applications and what things they wish the system had to improve their productivity and work”.
Based on this collaborative strategy workshop led by Credencys, the group agreed on Re-Designing and Re-Engineering the application front-end. Also, the architecture of the integration layer was transformed into a service layer which would be API driven and which would bolster the overall Input-Output performance while adhering to the high-level security.
Angular.Js and .NET were opted as the main technologies to support this transformation.
New workflow system
Key features of the application
Personalized dashboard : Users now have a new personalized dashboard showing an overview of their respective tasks, projects, reports, reminders, bookmarks, client details, team/group information, and more. Key components of the personalized dashboard are:
Color codes (Red-high priority, Yellow-moderate priority & Green-low priority) define task priority for today, tomorrow and the next five days.
Users can see lists of project reports shared with and received from other users.
They can view all reminders.
They can create bookmarks based on Clients, Dockets, & Matters and access this information quickly from a dashboard.
Timekeepers and PGLs (Practice Group Leaders) can view a list of their team members.
Directors can view the docket counts for their practice group members.
Docket management: A user had to apply multiple filters in the old docket center to view the tasks assigned to them whereas, in the new Docket center, users get a personalized view of their own tasks only.
Matter research center: Users can view case listings in the Matter Center.
They can search and sort matters by applying different filters and can save search filters for future use.
Users can bookmark important matters and subscribe to a digest to receive updates on specific matters via email. They can unsubscribe if required.
Users can make important notes using ‘in-app’ sticky notes.
They can view all the case documents and check the history for a case matter on a single page.
Effective report management: Users can generate reports related to their cases according to their requirements. They can apply filters by matter numbers and date ranges as well. The software allows creating a new document by merging multiple reports.
Litigation management: Litigation Management is done via the Litigation Center. It was created by integrating Compulaw, a matter and docket management solution to the main web application. Users can view the litigation matter list in the Litigation Center. They can filter the matter by date, matter number, and case team. Users can view the events associated with the selected matter such as deadlines, and dues.
QA center: Users can find the list of documents which were sent to them for review and quality assurance purposes by other users. The QA team will review the document and as soon as they accept the document it will move to outbox. Outbox will then push the document to IP Manager and update the status. All the rejected documents will be sent back to the docket center of the respective users.
Time account management: To help users in keeping track of their daily working hours, we used 3M accounting system and integrated it with the main system. Using this tool, leaders can see the working hours of their team members or juniors.
Key results achieved through the app
50% improvement in operational productivity
Highly personalized and intuitive UI/UX flow for the web solution
Modernized and Re-engineered the core application for the future.
Simplified daily tasks and activities of employees
Business impact/benefits of the app
Improved productivity
Reducing application load time from 2 minutes to 5 seconds led to large improvements in user productivity and operational efficiency.
Time-saving
Personalized Dashboard and Docket Center with specific filters helped employees to narrow down search results and save time.
Simplified docket management
Users can view all their tasks on the Dashboard itself. The tasks are color-coded based on their priority.
Faster processing
Replacing long-click actions with single-click actions helped users to process tasks such as de-docketing, view trifold lookups, release dockets, and exporting docket data in PDF or XLS formats faster.
Technology stack
