The Gazette 1984

GAZ E T TE

APRIL. 1984

Automation — The Society's Computer Working Party

by David Beattie, Solicitor

T HE growing awareness in the profession at large of the profusion of electronic accounting aids now available in the market-place for solicitors gives rise to a range of problems almost as large as the numb er of machines themselves. Large firms of solicitors are of sufficient scale to justify the appointment of independent c o n s u l t a n t s, r e p o r t i ng directly to an individual partnership on selection and implementation of computer systems. However, it is difficult to find consultants who are truly independent. Medium and small offices will, in any event, find it difficult to justify the cost of engaging a consultant and will generally be forced to take uneducated decisions on computerisation. The rate of change in the world of computers is such that it is very easy to sit back and wait to see what new machine appears next year. This can be a mistake, as experience to date shows that there will never be a perfect time to buy. Taking a "wait and see" attitude may merely postpone the time for starting to grapple with new technology and the implementation of more efficient office procedures to benefit partners, staff and clients of a practice. Computerisation has potential advantages in cost control and availability of management information to an office which is too big for the managing partner to retain a constant grasp of all financial information. This is matched, however, by the potential disadvantages which may arise from making a wrong decision on computerisa- tion, which can result in hundreds of hours of otherwise potentially chargeable time going unbilled, or being wasted in trying to retrieve the situation. Ad hoc Committee established Aware of these factors, a number of practitioners in medium to large sized offices in Dublin met together on an ad hoc basis in 1981, to try to pool resources in seeking advice on the area of computerising accounts and time records. They soon realised that there were numbers of their colleagues in smaller offices who were also interested in the topic. Accordingly the Council of the Law Society was asked to appoint an ad hoc committee to investigate the position with regard to the supply of computerised accounting and time recording systems in the Republic and to make recommendations as to the most suitable systems. The Committee was chaired by Rory O ' Donn e ll and its other members were J o hn Buckley, Joseph Du n d on and Charles Meredith. The Committee decided to appoint a Consultant to carry out the investigation and System Dynamics Limited was appointed Consultant. A working party was established to liaise with the Consultant, consisting of Messrs. Rory O ' Donn e l l, J o hn Buckley, Terence Liston, Kieran Murphy, David Beattie and Bart Moon ey assisted by Brendan Doherty of System

Dynamics Limited. The Consultant's brief was to examine all the systems currently on the market capable of running Solicitors' accounts and time recording and to produce a report on them. The Consultants' fees were to be met by a levy on all interested firms, pitched at two levels — larger firms (which were deemed to be firms with six or more fee earners, each contributed £500 and smaller firms each contributed £100). Unfortunately the sum originally collected did not meet the likely fees of the consultants and the Law Society was persuaded to make up any shortfall on the basis that they would be reimbursed out of any sum subsequently collected. These financial considerations caused a considerable delay, but eventually the Committee met in 1982 and decided to approach every computer manufacturer or software house advertising or p r omo t i ng its products for the solicitors' profession in this country to ask them to put forward a submission or proposal for computerising two specimen offices. Information on the volume of work in the offices represented on the working party was obtained by ascertaining the number of clients with live cases, the total numb er of cases in the office which were live, the typical numb er of book-keeping entries for each case and typical duration of each case. From this information a detailed set of requirements was drawn up for a typical small office based on approximately one hundred clients and two hundred to three hundred matters and for a larger office with a sub-office having from twenty to thirty fee earners and five thousand matters. This information was sent to all the companies active in the market and an advertisement was placed in Irish Computer Weekly, so that every supplier would be on notice of the study and have an opportunity of parti- cipating. With one or two exceptions, the replies were extremely slow in coming in and in order to vet these it was decided that no supplier would be considered who could not show a track record for his system. Any supplier who could show their system operating in a solicitor's practice in this country with a satisfied user or a number of such systems operating in the UK was considered. Solicitors' firms were approached directly to investigate their experiences and level of satisfaction with their suppliers and the Commi t t ee is most grateful for the assistance given by those a pp r o a c h e d. The vast majority of potential suppliers were unable to meet these criteria. Of those who did, six produced detailed responses but the remainder were unable to deal convincingly with the specifications. Two of the six were ruled out. one on the basis of a doub t f ul track record (on feedback from within the profession) and the other on the basis of price. More information was sent to the remaining four and they were 69