The Elevate ELM Project Matter Analyzer is a game-changer for law firms, giving them the ability to find and benchmark historical matters from which to base new matter plans.
Law firms are historically behind the curve with regard to technology. In our ongoing search for potential improvement to the operations of mid to large law firms, we interviewed the roles responsible for client service delivery and discovered opportunities for innovation.
Pain Points and Challenges:
Abridged workflow of a typical matter lifecycle:
Client intake and conflict management - Entering client data into billing system and cross-checking for conflicts with other like-clients
LPM or attorney prepares a matter plan proposal including estimated costs for the client - Opportunity:
85% of law firm innovation managers shared that historical matter data is not readily accessible to attorneys nor to legal project managers who are asked to prepare new matter plans and cost estimates for new client work.
90% of LPMs and attorneys responded that when creating a new matter, firms resort to digging through randomly stored MS Word, Excel, or PDF files, which takes hours to research for each new type of matter.
Client approves matter proposal
Matter is managed by attorney’s team, including legal project managers
Matter wraps up and ideally team performs a post review for potential improvement
Solution: With the guidance of David Bard, Elevate’s Cael product and design team developed a prototype called the “Historical Matter Analyzer,” which allows attorneys and legal project managers (LPMs) to search historical matter data and filter to view only the most appropriate results.
Results: In testing, the new experience took customers less than a minute to find the appropriate matter, which can save legal support teams hours of research and to build new matter plan proposals faster. Another benefit of this new product is the data visualization, which provides attorneys, among others, immediate BI insight into the performance of historical matters and which legal team structure performs best based on the type of matter.
Target Personas (Users):
Legal project managers (LPMs) within mid-large law firms who actively assist in managing status and budgets for teams of attorneys and their staff.
Attorneys within mid-large law firms who would like greater transparency into their historical matter-based data, including budget to actuals and billing realization of their clients.
CFO/Directors of Finance in within mid-large law firms who would like the firm’s attorneys to become more accurate in estimating matter proposals to ensure work in performed with profits in mind.
