Legal matter process
Ready to streamline the work of your teams? With CSI Lawyer, legal matter management is not about individual functions but the entire matter process from the intake to the completion.
Opening legal matters
CSI Lawyer’s matter process ensures a smooth intake of new legal matters.
The matter request process starts when a lawyer enters information that is available of a new matter into the software. The flexible matter request process then enables the participation of various parties. They check the matter and customer information and possible conflicts of interest. They can also initiate the KYC actions required to fulfill obligations under the AML legislation. A well-managed intake process will save the team from surprises in the later stages of the matter.
While waiting for the required intake actions to be completed, the software enables you to properly manage the matter request. You can set its pricing, work on its activities and make time entries of the work done. When the matter request is ready to be converted to the actual matter, the registered transactions and pricing details will move, too.
Checking conflicts of interest
There are multiple alternatives for checking conflicts. The quickest of them is the conflict search which shows if the customer has been a co-party, opponent or has had some other role in the matters saved in the software.
The more thorough conflict check, which is also saved in the software, enables identifying potential conflicts both for the principal and other legal matter parties. The check can still be complemented by emailing a conflict inquiry to the partners or the entire staff to ensure that there are no other obstacles for taking the matter.
Besides the matter history, other kind of obstacles for taking in new matters can be managed by adding customers to the blacklist.
Fulfilling KYC obligations
The AML legislation requires law firms to know their customers and to confirm it matter-based. CSI Lawyer enables setting a required identification level and interval for each customer and notifies users about the need to perform a new identification whenever a new legal matter is opened.
While the actual identification process takes place outside CSI Lawyer, the software supports monitoring its progress as well as handling the matter during the identification process. The software can be integrated to the KYC services Due AML, DOKS and Clento.
Setting the pricing
You have in your use a wide range of pricing features. You can set hour prices at several different levels. The price of an individual transaction is determined by the hour price hierarchy in the software. For example, the basic price added for a user or a transaction type can be overridden at the customer or matter level.
You can get more pricing options by taking into use a user- or a role-specific pricing model. To facilitate the pricing of different customer groups, you can create separate role price lists and attach them to customers.
Besides the hour based pricing, the software enables the use of unit priced and fixed priced transactions. If required, you can also set a price limit or a fixed price for the entire matter.
Customers providing continuous legal services benefit from the subscription pricing feature. It automatically creates to the matter a billable transaction with the agreed on price and interval, e.g. monthly. The actual work can still be registered and just attached to the subscription fee zero-priced.
Managing user rights
User access rights concerning matters can be defined in many ways by utilizing user types and groups, employee roles and related parameters. You can add the users needing access to a matter to responsibility roles or as its team members. If there is a need to limit access to a matter, you can define it as an insider matter or limit its visibility to the specific groups.
If CSI Lawyer has been integrated to a document management system, all user access rights defined for a matter will also be inherited to the related documents.
Closing matters
When the legal matter is completed, it still has to be closed to remove it from the list of active matters. However, the matter closing phase may offer even more significant benefits. The information from a well-completed matter can be used later in the evaluation of workloads of new matters or in marketing.
To start the matter closing process the responsible lawyer ensures that the matter information corresponds to its actual execution. Once this is done, the lawyer can utilize the matter status options by marking the matter as “Ready for closing”. It indicates that it is ready for the support staff to take over and complete the closing process.
Upon termination, the matter may also be archived. In that case the information about the physical or digital location of matter-related documents is saved in the software.