Modernizing Legal Case Management Systems
Automation and emerging technologies have proven to be incredibly beneficial to a wide range of industries already. The legal field, however, hasn’t been as aggressive with its adoption.
That’s about to change. Government agencies face evolving missions and constantly changing policies and regulations that drive a need for more efficient case management. Attorneys, paralegals, and information managers are discovering that their legacy systems can’t keep up with the increasing volume of case information; they are having trouble supporting internal case management processes and facilitating timely, efficient communication their client’s demand.
As a result, both legal practitioners and their IT departments are recognizing the need to replace their rigidly-structured legacy solutions and manual processes with secure, more agile, automated solutions to streamline case management, enable more effective collaboration among teams, and improve overall efficiency.
Rising modernization and security expectations demand action – and quickly
Government Legal departments face mounting pressure to improve services to their constituents and reduce wasteful spending while maintaining the security and integrity of sensitive information. The ability to perform these operations efficiently is becoming a competitive advantage in an industry that has historically been slow to adopt emerging technologies.
To be successful, government legal teams need better integrated and more powerful tools to help prepare and provide advice and counsel to many areas of practice ranging from essential management, operations, and regulatory affairs activities to contract, fiscal, and employment law.
Legal offices need a more effective way to collaborate with internal and external parties, track and manage attorney caseloads, and record hours, deadlines, and appointments. Attorneys and clerks require real-time access to case information from any device, anywhere, at any time. Legal IT departments need systems that offer structural flexibility as well as customizable security levels, so information is both retrievable and secure no matter where or when it is accessed. With the safety of sensitive data at stake, new solutions need to have robust security measures against any threat of information compromises.
A flexible, centralized information repository
The Microsoft Cloud and modular applications such as ProCase Legal Case Management (LCM) are specifically designed to address the many challenges facing the legal industry today. Built by Microsoft partner Procentrix, ProCase LCM is a purpose-built solution developed on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform.
The integrated platform offers an intelligent, configurable, and FedRAMP-compliant central repository for essential and supportive case information that can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. Centralizing case data—related data, structured metadata, and unstructured documents and files such as emails, texts, or other communications—eliminates data silos and visibility gaps, helping to create a 360-degree view of every case, on demand.
Out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft Office tools such as Outlook, Word, and SharePoint provides a familiar user experience that simplifies collaboration and communication among internal and external stakeholders. Meanwhile, the point-and-click interface design allows end users and their IT support teams to easily create an array of automated workflows and update without additional coding.
Now, legal teams from private firms and government departments alike can find the precise information they need, when they need it in order to:
- Create a more holistic approach to gathering, organizing, and retrieving information
- Provide secure collaboration and exchange of documents between both internal and external parties
- Streamline judicial processes
- Increase visibility of case and judge scheduling
- Reduce time needed to prepare for cases
- Enable real-time access to vital data anywhere, anytime, from any authorized device
A tested and trusted solution to secure highly-sensitive legal information
When a government agency was looking to replace their outdated systems with one centralized legal case management system, they decided to leverage their existing Microsoft investment and worked with Procentrix to develop a modernized Legal Case Management platform, now called ProCase.
The client benefited from flexible deployment, robust and configurable security, and automated capabilities. The ProCase platform and foundation of Microsoft products, including the Azure Cloud, allowed Procentrix to develop additional innovative and creative case management solutions without using custom coding. For example, Procentrix developed a secure collaboration portal for LCM that enabled multi-factor, authenticated access to external entities to share information pertinent to the agency’s cases.
The legal industry is predicated on the exchange of ideas and information in the pursuit of justice. Legal teams whose hands were previously tied by manual data management processes and segmented operations of the past can now benefit from easier collaboration, efficient case management, and more responsive service to their clients and colleagues through cloud-based technologies.
Contact me, visit Microsoft.com/Government and visit procentrix.com to learn more about how technologies from Microsoft and Procentrix can help your team better manage its caseload and improve client services.
