Productivity in Your Law Practice: How to Automate Case Workflows with Matter Templates
Attorneys who routinely work on cases based on predetermined deadlines, tasks and events can save time by automating the process. Successfully navigating through each matter often requires a number of repeatable tasks and events with a series of common interdependencies. Manually repeating these processes on a daily basis can stifle productivity and sometimes lead to human errors and unwanted omissions.
Enter Matter Templates which allow attorneys to set up and automate the process for handling different matter types by specifying a group of tasks, calendar events, and custom data fields. You can create templates for types of cases or matters in various practice areas, like family law, criminal defense or immigration law.
Leveraging the right technology is the place to begin for streamlining your internal processes and operating a more efficient firm. Let’s use Rocket Matter as an example to show how you can use a practice management system to create workflows with customizable matter templates:
Define Your Workflow
Customize which tasks and events will need to take place based upon the type of case. For example, you may choose to specify a number of items, from drafting a welcome letter, to making a final court appearance and you can specify the timing of each event.
Define Relationships
By dialing in the details, you can set your billing method, statute of limitations (if applicable) or add unlimited custom fields for incorporating data into your matters. From there, you’re easily able to populate pre-defined contacts or data such as birth dates, social security numbers and other related items.
Designate Milestone Events
In Rocket Matter, milestones are parent events that enable the user to create a series of subsequent related events underneath. Milestones can trigger a cascade of events to follow. A milestone can be an important court date, a form that needs to be filled out by a specific date, or anything you specify.
A Dashboard View
No matter where you left off on a case, you’ll always be able to see exactly where you are with one glance of the dashboard. This is critical in a busy firm where continuous re-orientation of different matters is necessary. You’ll be able to see all the related tasks and events, both completed and pending. You’ll also be able to see the upcoming related calendar events and billable activity.
Without a defined process to organize and chart the flow of tasks and information within a law firm, it can be difficult to get a handle on many of the administrative details. Too much time spent on duplicity and time consuming administrative tasks can become the norm. By incorporating a practice management tool, you are implementing that defined process and many firms have been able to realize an up to 40% reduction in administrative time accordingly.
In addition, implementing a system like this will help you identify and validate your existing processes. How do you typically start a new family law or criminal defense matter? How are incoming and outgoing paper and digital documents typically handled? By identifying it all during the workflow creation, you’ll be able to more easily spot bottlenecks and inefficiencies that add administrative time and effort. Finally, you’ll be able to automate a portion of those tasks that are necessary to help save even more.
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