Case Complexity, Volume and Quest for Efficiency Drives Demand for Advanced Case Management System
Release Date: 1/28/2008
Larger firms move to adopt new generation of powerful web-based CMS to meet growth
Dallas, TX - January 28, 2008 - The second half of 2007 saw a sharp increase in activity for Lucid IQ’s case management system (CMS) technology, CaseManagerPro. That demand continues into 2008 according to the Dallas-based software developer, and the growth is not limited to the small-firm arena, the historic primary market for more traditional CMS.
The biggest growth in demand for CaseManagerPro is in larger firms with critical competitive and organizational needs. Driving demand are law firm partners and clients with expectations of better technology for both efficiency and effectiveness. The scale, complexity and expectations surrounding legal services continue to grow in large firms, particularly for Multi-District Litigation (MDL), large client relationships and high-volume operations.
“Our studies over the years have shown the larger firms to be late adopters of CMS,” says Andrew Z. Adkins III, Director of the Legal Technology Institute at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. “We haven’t recently looked at CaseManagerPro’s success in that market, though they’ve always done larger scale deployments. They come from the mass tort niche where integrating systems, scalability, workflow standards and web access are critical CMS functions. That level of expertise has converged with the greater emphasis on those attributes in large firms.”
“The toughest practices to manage are where we’re seeing the demand growth, of course,” said Richard Spies, CEO of Lucid IQ. “Generally, they fall into two categories - Complex Litigation – especially MDL - and Practice Standardization to manage high case volume consistently. They both typically manage thousands of cases across multiple offices or practice areas with different cultures and requirements.”
Noting existing major clients and an onslaught of new activity, Spies says the big firms have embraced the technology. “McDermott, Will & Emery and Hunton & Williams have new projects in the works. Kaye-Scholer, Perkins-Coie, and a collaborative (multi-firm) MDL project are underway. A 400 attorney litigation department is planning its roll-out. They’re keeping us busy.”
Much of the inefficiency in large-scale operations results from incompatible or conflicting information residing in multiple systems, practice standards with inadequate supporting infrastructure, and reliance on systems and databases that simply lack the extensibility needed for the more complex, dynamic scenarios.
New Lucid IQ clients also include mid-sized firms that found these same capabilities address their obstacles to greater effectiveness:
“We represent developers, property owners and national tenants for property tax appeals throughout the State of New York,” says Brad Cronin of Cronin, Cronin & Harris, a mid-sized New York firm. “We require software that’s flexible in order to deal with multiple tax jurisdictions and their various requirements including critical deadlines. Our clients usually own all or part of multiple properties, often with intersecting ownership rights, so tracking their respective interests and property information was a major challenge. We must have the ability to quickly ascertain.