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LocalGovernmentLawyer The Legal Department of the Future February 2016 29 workflow for a routine case and to submit their information via a portal not only relieves some of the added pressure of administrative work for lawyers and support staff but frees up your team to focus on the work they enjoy and can provide value doing. The use of technology does not even have to end at setting up cases. Client portals can also be used to reduce the administrative burden of keeping clients up to date by providing self-service access to information about the cases your team undertakes on their behalf. With growing numbers of people considering technology to assist their teams we have noticed more frequent requests to include mandatory fields in workflows. This prevents users from progressing to a different section of a workflow or being able to submit it without completing all of the required fields ensuring your team has everything they need and saving time following up for information. Risk management Using workflows can also mitigate risk. By mapping the processes for routine work important information and regulatory steps are set out for clients and junior team members. This not only saves time and ensures consistency but helps you to clearly demonstrate compliance with Lexcel and practice management standards. The fact that more people are asking for workflows with mandatory fields could well be a symptom of less experience within legal teams in combination with less experienced client departments. However adopting workflows and increasing the use of client portals to automate aspects of your service should not be seen as a means to reduce cost at the expense of the service you provide. In fact they can be ways to relieve some of the pressure on your team while ensuring that legal standards are being met despite less knowledge and experience. They can also be ways of freeing up your staff to do the work that interests them and to even save enough time for members of your team to take part in more training or specialist activities ultimately improving the overall level of experience and job satisfaction within your department. Perhaps the adoption of workflows and client portals could even improve the results of future surveys Tanya Corsie is Director and Chief Operating Officer at Iken Business Ltd. Adopting workflows and increasing the use of client portals to automate aspects of your service should not be seen as a means to reduce cost at the expense of the service you provide.