James Scozzi, managing partner of Elite Law Solicitors
Elite Law Solicitors of Watford/Central London who incorporate HM Law Costs Draftsmen pride themselves on providing the best and most comprehensive ‘one-stop-shop’ legal costs service available anywhere in the UK. With over 20 years of experience in this market, they know how to maximise solicitors’ earnings from a case file.
When they started looking for case management solutions to help manage their business, they looked at the whole market. They wanted to give their staff (including consultants), a proper IT framework to manage their cases and workload as well as the ability to work remotely.
They chose ‘One Office’ the market leading technology solution from DPS and then decided to have it all delivered as a fully hosted solution by dpscloud.
By setting up workflows in the DPS case management system, tasks are created automatically, allowing the management team to see who is completing them and when. This ensures time frames are adhered to and client care is kept at the forefront of everything Elite Law do.
‘’The DPS case management system enables us to ensure a high level service to all our clients. By providing all users with the same pool of precedents and resources, such as Precedent Letters, pre-populated Court forms etc., we are able to offer our clients a more efficient service. The ability to use tasks to monitor the service we provide is also a priceless management tool’’ said James Scozzi, managing partner.
He is also using the Profit Costs and Time Management reports available in financial director- DPS’s legal accounting software– in order to monitor his firm’s performance on a monthly/quarterly basis as well as monitor the work-in-progress and the time recorded on matters for each costs specialist. ‘
‘’We do a lot of fixed-fee work, so knowing how much time a fee earner spends on a file and comparing this with the corresponding bills is vital to us. This particular information gives us a clear insight on their productivity/time management and ultimately, on our firm’s profitability. It also helps us to ensure that our bills- even though fixed- are a true reflection of the amount of work we put in.’’ said James.
mylegalspace, the client portal solution from DPS, assists Elite Law in delivering a smooth service by allowing clients a secure way to view the work that is being done on their files. This is particularly useful for cases where Elite negotiate costs on behalf of their clients.
The system sends out automatic notifications whenever the case is updated, keeping everyone informed with minimum effort from the costs specialists but maximum reward for the clients.
The above-mentioned solutions are provided as part of dpscloud, the managed IT solution that Elite Law Solicitors employ in order to relieve themselves of the responsibility of managing their technology and safeguarding their data in-house.
The provision of these software products over the cloud, in a completely secure environment, means that the lawyers have the ability to work from anywhere and deal with urgent matters, as and when instructed to do so by their clients.
Using this system, Elite Law Solicitors are also able to connect staff working in different offices and bring them back into the team.
‘’The use of a case management system is not unusual for costs specialists’’ concluded James. ‘’However, the combination of this software with other applications and the integration of them all into a managed IT solution- gives us a competitive advantage, technology-wise, which materialises in the provision of the highest standards of service that our clients expect of us’.
