We are in the age of digital transformation. In most business areas, this has been about digitizing the specific business tools used to produce the business output for lawyers, e.g., a digital word processor rather than a typewriter. But in many areas, much is still to be done to digitize the process and workflow itself.
For most businesses, many efficiency and quality gains can be made from carefully and thoroughly mapping and digitizing the whole value generation flow from demand to delivery. Legal Plant is doing precisely that for law practices. This makes it possible to unleash powerful analytics support, automation, and proper resource utilization and quality control, making the business better and more profitable.
Three levels
There are three levels of workflow support in LegalPlant:
for many processes, e.g., establishing a case, there are step-by-step guides or wizards for entering the needed data in an optimal order
LegalPlant features an entire to-do list system deeply integrated into the whole system so that work packages and task delegation can be captured and planned on the fly well integrated into the daily use of the system in a logical and intuitive context
as extra support Legal Plant has a well-designed and powerful notification system that nudges and updates the users dynamically to ensure optimal transparency and efficiency.
Proper data structuring
Let's stop at the first level, i.e., establishing a case. It is a simple process in which the user is led by the hand of a wizard. The entire wizard is divided into four steps, and a summary of the data entered in each stage is always visible in the panel on the right side of the screen. The wizard is constructed in such a way that, on the one hand, it ensures the correct structure of the entered data, and on the other, it prevents the user from overlooking something or forgetting some vital information.
In the first step, you should provide basic information about the case, i.e., the title and short description, and the topic and category to which the case belongs. In this step, you also provide the planned date of completion of the proceedings and assign a person responsible for further work on the case. You can also choose a workflow template that best suits the nature of a given case.
The next step is customer details. This operation is as simple as can be - enter the name or organizational number, and brreg.no will do the rest. If the customer is a natural person, it is enough to enter their data.
The next step is to provide the details of the contact person (or people). Again, you can choose between entries existing in the application database or adding new people to the register.
Finally, in the last step (likewise, you can choose from existing ones or add a new one), you enter the counterpart in a given case - if such an entity exists in the Legal Plant register. It is worth remembering that you can add more than one counterpart.
You can see a summary of all entered data at the end and a 'Save and add' button. After clicking it, our new case appears in the register with the status 'New.' Note - if, for some reason, you interrupt the procedure of creating a new case before going through all the steps of the wizard, the entered information will be saved, and the case will be visible on the list with the 'draft' status.
Efficient workflow
The second level, i.e., the to-do list system deeply integrated into the whole system, is intuitive and easy to use. It enables quick and straightforward delegation of individual tasks to case team members.
The work management system consists of milestones and tasks. Milestones are larger stages to be completed within a given case, which is divided into individual, specific tasks. Both milestones and tasks can have a unique title, description, and due date. Still, only tasks can be assigned to a particular person. They also have their statuses - changing the status to 'Completed' results in updating the milestone progress bar in which the task is included. After closing all milestone tasks, the last one is marked as completed.
Both milestones and tasks can be added and ordered in any way by the user. However, for convenience, we have introduced templates that make it much easier to use the workflow. The templates correspond to the most common cases in practice, and the ordering of milestones and tasks corresponds to the order of actions appropriate for these cases.
This allows you to organize work very efficiently with minimum time spent writing down individual tasks.
Never miss anything
And finally, the third level of workflow support in Legal Plant is the notification system. In this case, the user experience is very similar to other solutions of this kind, so there are no difficulties in using this functionality. Notifications appear in the upper right corner of the screen in the form of a bell icon. Their complete list - including already clicked notifications, can also be found in the appropriate tab in the 'My work' panel. They concern only matters and tasks directly related to a given user, thanks to which they bring significant value instead of increasing information chaos.
As you can see, Legal Plant supports a smooth workflow from the stage of setting up a case through preparing a list of specific activities to be performed to handling notifications regarding tasks related to the case. All these functionalities are transparent, intuitive, and very easy to use. As a result, legal Plant is a convenient tool for everyday use in every law firm.
