Law Technology

Update on Case Management Software

As many of you know, I have a penchance for case management and a background in programming and technology. Lately, Needles and TrialWorks have been the top two dogs in case management. Historically Needles was the leader and over the past 5 years, TrialWorks has been coming on strong and overtaking Needles as a better case management program.

I looked at and reviewed over 30 case management programs. as all of my case information was going to be in the program, I stayed away from companies that used a proprietary data system and from one man shops. I decided to go with TrialWorks over Needles. You wouldn't go wrong with either of the programs, but TrialWorks was just a better fit and seemed to be fresher and more up to date than Needles. I purchased TrialWorks, put half the money down and they converted my TimeMatters data.

About 3 years ago, I heard about an incredible program being developed by a plaintiff's firm in New York. About a month after I bought TrialWorks, SmartAdvocate came out. It was the program I had heard about and it looked like it was an amazing program. I liked the features and the screen layouts, but the best feature was one that set up a mini-website for each client and notified them about their case. Here is their description:

The ability to automatically forward cover letters and copies of documents to clients either by e-mail or snail mail as the documents are received (pursuant to the rules each law firm establishes – hereinafter referred to as 'Rules Based'). For example, if a police report is received, if the law firm rules require, a cover letter and a copy of the police report is e-mailed to the client automatically as it was received, based upon the police report icon being linked to an image. If the law firm is not scanning documents yet, then based on the date the police report was received being filled in with the date the report was received, the client will get a cover letter advising them of your receipt[pt of the relevant document. Same will be true for all documents designed by the law firm ie: hospital records, medical records, medical reports, deposition transcripts, expert reports, orders, etc.

SmartAdvocate™ automatically creates an Extranet website for each client so that a client, with a user name and password, is able to obtain, at any time, the status of their case, access to their case calendar, access to case documents, hypertext links to the staff working on their case (all Rules Based). Whenever their Extranet is updated with new information, the client receives an e-mail with a hypertext link bringing them back to their Extranet to see what changes have taken place in their case.

Well….those sound like great functions. I really thought that a web-based system was the wave of the future. It's not a feature that I needed to have right now, but it's something that would be important down the road.

I called Smart Advocate. This is a program that they built inhouse and decided to market to the rest of the legal community. They went to a trade show or two (Mass Torts Made Perfect). They have a great programmer, who was doing the in house work and also doing the installs. They were starting off with a few local/ in-state firms and he said to check back in a month. So I did…..then 45 days…then a month. The next thing I knew it was nine months later. I was told that they weren't going to sell the program outside the state of New York. Wow.

I wrote sent two e-mails and made two calls to Jerry Parker, the senior partner and brains behind Smart Advocate and didn't get a response.

So…..While I still thought that TrialWorks was the best program on the market, I really wanted a web-based or extranet solution. Switching case management systems is a huge undertaking and it's not something I wanted to do twice in five years. So I decided that I'd sit tight for 2–3 years or however long it would take for that to become readily available.

While I still liked TrialWorks the best, I didn't want to switch to it, then switch again when an extra-net program became available.

The TimeMatters website says it has an extra-net option, but when researching it, they really didn't. Then I got a call from TrialWorks telling me they were adding an extra-net option and that I should check it out. I did and am now moving to TrialWorks.

Full post as published by South Carolina Trial Law Blog on May 03, 2009 (boomark / email).