
A practical and high-quality work process starts with an overview and structure. The information about the client and the case details lies at the core of any legal process, which is why this is the core module of Legal Plant. By having all case information in one central place, the legal staff can avoid repetitive work and friction, as well as efficiently keep their client up to date on the progress of their case - in other words, achieve more with less effort. That makes happier clients and more healthy businesses.

Today's digital world is full of specialized digital tools, which we use as our toolchain. This generates the problem that processes and data get fragmented across all these tools, preventing optimal workflows. That is why LegalPlant ties all this into a unified user experience where functionality and data can be accessed from one central hub. Legal Plant doesn't replace the specialized tools, but ensures an overview and end-to-end perspective on workflow and data. This unleashes the power of the cloud, analytics, and automation, which can improve effectiveness and quality immensely!

### Inconspicuous but powerful features

Legal Plant's functionalities that facilitate and speed up legal work may look inconspicuous. Still, their power stems from something other than impressive features. The key to the value brought by Legal Plant is the storage, linking, and access to all necessary information from one place. The first central register maintained with our solution is the case registry. After clicking on the 'Cases' tab on the sidebar, you can see a list of cases your organization handles. In this view, you can check the current status of the case, its title (which can immediately indicate the type of legal issue you need to deal with), as well as the name (or name and surname) of the client, name, and surname of the contact person(s) on behalf of the company (if the company is the client), as well as the data of the person assigned to the case.

!['Registry'](/images/registry.png)

However, this is only some information in the case register. After clicking on the case title, the case details view opens, containing all the information needed at all stages of work. The data collected in this view is structured within the submenu on the left side of the screen. In the beginning, all the details of the case - who is the client, who is the counterpart, status, details of contact persons, the person assigned to the case, and avatars of people from the case team.

Below, in the submenu on the left, there is the 'Similar cases' tab, in which the system displays other cases grouped in the same category along with the data of the people who handle them. This makes it possible to take advantage of the collective knowledge gathered by a given law firm - for example, document templates or the specificity of workflow organization.

The next item is 'Case team' - there, you can see who (in addition to the person assigned to the case) deals with its processing. Again, there is data on law firm employees assigned to tasks as part of the case workflow.

The name of the following tab speaks for itself. 'Documents' contains all documents related to the case, divided into documents stored in the application database and those on an integrated external drive.

!['Workflow'](/images/workflow.png)

The next item is 'Workflow,' which is worth dwelling on for a while. There you will find a list of milestones with their tasks, as well as their status and due date. From this view, it is also easy to check the people responsible for individual tasks and manage the entire workflow. [The article devoted to this issue](/articles/workflow-management/truly-end-to-end-digital-workflow) provides a detailed description of the workflow functionality.

The next item in the case details submenu is the timesheet. This convenient tool allows you to register and check the time employees have spent on a given case. Thanks to this data, it is easy to manage the time of lawyers and the delegation of individual tasks within the scope of competence of each of them.

The last tab is logs, thanks to which you can view the activities performed in a given case by the case team, such as changing the status of a task, adding documents, and the like, as well as the current status of case synchronization with external business systems.

### Clients and counterparts

Moving down the sidebar, you will find the 'Clients' and 'Counterparts' tabs. Their names speak for themselves - they are registers of parties in cases conducted by the law firm. Before we move on to a detailed description of the functionality of these registers, it must be emphasized that the content of both of these tabs is not simply an address book of companies and individuals whose paths, in one way or another, crossed with the paths of a law firm. Instead, these registers concern only and exclusively entities involved in currently pending cases. This means that both of these tabs are free of unnecessary and accidental information - we see here only those companies and people who are affected by the real work of your legal company's lawyers.

!['Counterparts'](/images/Counterparts.png)

The other two tabs, grouped under the common label 'Contacts,' are the office's address book. For convenience, it is divided into individuals and companies. Their data is shown in a handy table, and clicking on any entry shows the details of the entry and application logs related to it.

As you can see, Legal Plant supports the correct, published process of conducting affairs in law firms. This is done by grouping all the necessary data in one place and giving them a healthy, transparent and logical structure. This way, work can be carried out more efficiently, faster and easier.


Legal work can can be substantially improved by solving problems related to fragmented, unstructured data. Legal Plant allows you to give your data a transparent structure that will enable you to optimize the workflow of a law firm.

All case and client information in one place


Good legal practice depends on integrity and trust. Documenting the arm-length distance principle in all dealings to ensure that the parties are independent, on equal footing, and that transactions are fair is the way to uphold this. Transparency and openness about assessments of potential conflict situations are complex matters in today's interconnected international business world. Transparency is both about compliance and building long-lasting valuable customer relations, which means that keeping control over this is crucial for safe and profitable business operations.

Proper conflict of interest monitoring depends hugely on having sufficient data available at any given point. By having a counterpart registry, where your clients' counterparts in each case are registered, Legal Plant can monitor and notify about potential conflict of interest situations. Based on these notifications, the case manager can assess the specific instance, and evaluation and possible measures can be recorded to document the resolution of these conflict situations. This is a much safer and more efficient way to handle conflict searches than manual processes and searches in various alternative business systems across the legal practice.

### Make it clear

Each register must be clear and legible so that it can be used comfortably. The Legal Plant's counterparts register is no exception here. It is available as a clear table in which the names of companies and individuals appearing in cases conducted by the law firm as a counterpart are collected. Clicking on the selected entry shows the details view, where, in addition to the matters in which the given counterparty is involved, we can also see the details of this entity and contact persons.

In this way, each Legal Plant user can easily and quickly find out about the network of connections between entities within a given law firm.

!['Counterparts'](/images/Counterparts.png)

When it comes to adding counterparts, it is an easy and effortless operation. This can be done in two ways.

The first, most often used, is to add a counterpart when creating a new case. The adding cases wizard allows you to attach one or many counterparts, and integration with [brreg.no](http://brreg.no) is a great help here, which allows you to quickly find and connect a company if it is registered in Norway. Naturally, adding a natural person as a counterpart is also possible. It is worth mentioning that Legal Plant allows you to add several entities as counterparts.

The second way is to add a counterpart in the case detail view. Just click in the upper right corner of the appropriate tab and follow the uncomplicated instructions.

As you can see, using the counterparts register is convenient, and its editing is straightforward. These factors increase transparency and eliminate conflicts of interest within a law firm.


Transparency and trust are crucial in any business activity. Still, in the work of a law firm, these factors are of particular importance. That's why Legal Plant has built-in functionality to detect potential conflicts of interest quickly.

Out-of-the-box conflict search


Analytics and automation can significantly support legal work processes to make them better and more effective. This requires case data to be structured and well classified to enable computer algorithms to identify similar cases, suggest templates, and preprocess documents and case planning, thereby removing unnecessary repetitive work and efforts. This frees up time for real legal analytical work where human brain power and experience is central. As a result, the lawyer's day becomes more interesting and pleasant, which is good for the business and the bill to the client - it's a win-win situation.

### Four dimensions

Legal Plant has three main mechanisms for case classification:

1.  industry domain or vertical,
2.  general topic,
3.  category of case

The fourth dimension, which is applicable law, will be implemented shortly.

!['Case details'](/images/CaseDetails.png)

Based on these dimensions, the Legal Plant engine can get a pretty good understanding of the anatomy of a case and power up a whole lot of smartness! Legal Plant is a process-oriented system where the user and the system in an interactive workflow enrich the case information for each new data entry in a structured way. As much as possible, the system suggests relevant data and choices, and the user accepts and approves to make it an effortless and intuitive process that seems friction-free and seamless to the users.

### How it works

When it comes to general topic and case categories, we assign these parameters to each case when creating it. The «add new case» wizard is designed in such a way that the categorization of issues is as easy as possible. Thanks to the fact that the user assigns the general topic and case category in the first step, we can be sure that no new case will be added to the database without these parameters.

The existing pool of topics and categories is an effect of the practical, everyday work of experienced lawyers, resulting from their knowledge and experience.

When we talk about the first dimension, i.e. industry domain or vertical, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. This data is in the company registry [brreg.no](http://brreg.no), which is integrated with Legal Plant. When, in the second step of the adding case wizard, we select a client using the search engine in the Brønnøysundregistrene directory, the information regarding the industry domain of a given company is attached automatically.

The last dimension of the data structure that is yet to be implemented is the applicable law. We plan to implement this functionality in the coming months.

!['Success'](/images/Success.png)

### Easy to do means well done

Structuring the data collected in Legal Plant is easy to carry out, seamless, and intuitive. It is an easy process that guarantees that all data will be entered correctly - the appropriate user experience of the process ensures that the user will be willing and able to carry it out well. Furthermore, data structured in this way is susceptible to processing with artificial intelligence, which can significantly reduce the hassle associated with the mechanical performance of repetitive activities and help reduce the effort and costs related to legal work.


Would everyday work without tedious, repetitive tasks be more pleasant and efficient?
 The answer is obvious. That is why maintaining the correct data structure is critical because only structured data allows various automation.
 Legal Plant has built-in mechanisms to support such data structuring. Moreover, they are intuitive and easy to use, making it much more likely to keep things in order.

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