Special focus: It’s multiple views that matter

By Doug McLachlan, marketing director, Axxia Systems

The legal profession is feeling the heat – commercial, client and legislative pressures mean the race is on to hone competitiveness, responsiveness, efficiency and agility. A business needs to be functioning holistically, in the round, connected and connecting. In such a climate, one has to question whether the essentially narrow focus of matter-centric computing is still the way to go. Could we be entering a new era as firms start to appreciate the bigger picture?

Today, one could validly argue that systems cannot solely be matter-centric because there are at least three other core views needed to allow the business, as opposed to the matter management function, to prosper.

For starters, they need to be fee-earner centric. The fee earner needs to know what he has to do, by when, with what priority; he needs access to all his data, documents and all the tools that will enable him to progress things quickly and in compliance with rules and regulations; he needs to be able to create, change and use workflows to govern how matters are conducted; he needs to know what he can delegate and who he can delegate to; and he needs to know future workloads and availability to enable him to plan effectively for the future.

This magical system also needs to be client-centric. How does one matter relate to other matters for this client?; who else is working for this client?; how important is this client?; is he profitable?, does he owe money?; does he pay well?; what other business can he bring the firm?

Last but not least, we also need to have a business-centric take on things. Are individuals/departments/partners meeting all compliance and Law Society rules? Are they following corporate risk management procedures and operational standards? Are they hitting time recording targets, billing targets and cash collection targets? Are they profitable enough? Are they doing enough business development work? Where is their next business coming from? Do we have enough capacity in the firm if x brings in y?

Consider the modern legal business as a cube – one, two-dimensional face is the equivalent of the matter-centric view. Turn the cube around and you get the business in 3D with different yet equally valid and valuable perspectives. Matter-centricity is important, certainly, but it shouldn’t be the be-all-and-end-all. One of the reasons it has emerged as a fashionable choice is the range of applications that have been designed to support the matter life-cycle, to reinforce the single view. They haven’t been challenged by any truly adaptive technology that can ‘turn the cube’ and provide multiple views from within the same application. Until now, that is.

Suppliers of traditional PMS systems are realising that, in order to take back ground from the document management providers and progenitors of matter-centricity, they need to deliver a next generation system that is sufficiently flexible to enable users to take whatever view they need. Staying within one single application, a user should be able to work in 3D – effortlessly switching perspectives, from matter to fee-earner to client to business rather than being trammelled in a two-dimensional workspace.

For a managing partner considering new system selection, the arrival of the first of these next generation tools should simplify matters enormously. Do you opt for a matter management solution or a business management solution? Do you buy a single view when you could have multiple views? Do you choose inflexibility over versatility? Not if you’re success-oriented you don’t. In the post-Clementi legal landscape, it won’t be the big that gobble up the small, but the quick that will devour the slow. To move swiftly but surely, you need to have a thorough, detailed and complete picture of how you currently operate – and how you will need to operate to succeed and prosper in the years ahead. Your employees need to be fully empowered with the tools to enable them to see and run every facet of their individual and collective roles. Your business has to be viewed and managed in the round, and not seen purely as a matter-processing factory. The right system will open up your choices, not restrict them. Welcome to the age of business-centric computing.