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business; their services will not be secured by the
prospect of Dickensian office procedures.
While gaining staff co-operation in the proposed
venture, do not overlook the importance of your own
involvement. After the decision to install a particular
system, you must take an active part in supervision of
the new fixed asset. A wise purchaser will learn to use
the equipment himself in case of emergency as when
your operator is either on holidays or has suffered a
nervous breakdown from the whole affair.
The Law Society Technology Committee Handbook
provides a useful set of recommendations for the
guidance of intending purchasers. It lists those suppliers
who have promised to observe a Code of Standards
drawn up by the Society. You should furnish a profile
of the firm to your prospective supplier who is
responsible for matching his wares against your
requirements. Unless you either hold a Master's Degree
in Computer Science or delight at the sound of bytes,
synchronous transmission and toggle switches, leave the
technical details to the supplier. Your only concern is
whether the equipment and software under review
perform the required tasks. Based on the findings of
your office survey, hopefully you will have identified
the specific areas of practice that may profitably admit
of automation. These divide into 2 functional
categories:
1. Administration
—client and matter accounting, nominal ledger,
payroll, petty cash, billing, time-recording, client
index, archive.
The efficient management of internal office
procedures is a pre-requisite to increasing your
practice's fee-income. Several programs on the market
will automate a number of these administrative
routines. For example, your client accounting will
greatly benefit from the automatic posting of cash
received or payments made to the appropriate client
ledger card. Similarly, transfers between office and
client accounts will be entered on the ledger card, debits
and credits noted and all balances updated at once.
Some accounts packages allow unpaid outlay on behalf
of clients, e.g. searches, to be posted as a debit to the
office account on the appropriate ledger card(s). This
enables any V.A.T. on the amount to be reclaimed at
the earliest date — before the disbursement is paid. It is
also a safeguard to ensure that the cost is ultimately
recovered from your client.
The pursuit of efficiency for its own sake may be
highly desirable but will not necessarily lead to greater
profits. A streamlined operation is the means, not the
end. However, due to the recent introduction of the new
Solicitors' Accounts Regulations, many practices will
decide to automate their book-keeping for reasons other
than financial gain. The new rules impose,
inter alia
, a
twice-yearly reconciliation of client funds. If your
accounts are not maintained in some degree of order,
your friendly auditor — who must report what he finds
to the Law Society — will spend 2 weeks pouring over
the books, become more and more confused and finally
land you with a bill guaranteed to increase by a factor of
7 your chances of a mild heart attack. In the meantime,
he will have produced a qualified report or, worse, a
declaration that your client accounts do not comply
with the regulations. Should you miraculously avoid the
physical after-effects normally associated with an
accountant's fee-note, the Society's institution of
disciplinary proceedings will almost certainly cause a
similar reaction.
A time-recording facility has recently been
incorporated into most legal accounting packages. Our
profession has been slow to charge for its services on the
basis time spent. Accountants, by way of contrast, have
not been so reluctant to bill their clients according to an
hours and minutes calculation. As the scale fee in
conveyancing and probate becomes less remunerative in
real terms, particularly in the case of lengthy and
difficult transactions, solicitors will look to time-costing
to maintain their level of profit. Were a lawyer to
confront his accountant with a time-based professional
fee, the coronary effect posited would be equally
debilitating but, fortunately, the role is reversed. If you
are considering the purchase of an accounts program, a
time-recording option should be available for future
reference, even if not immediately required. Any system
must observe the Accounts Regulations in three
essential respects: office and client monies kept apart,
safeguard against creating a debit balance on client
account and easy 6-monthly reconciliation of client
funds.
2. Fee-Earning
—word-processing, information retrieval, tele-
communications, support/event-driven systems,
and automatic document formation.
A vast array of computer options are available to
assist the fee-earner.
Word-processing allows the creation and storage of
routine letters to be produced as required. Furthermore,
a complex once-off document or letter may be processed
on the computer through the manipulation of text,
inserting a paragraph here or a sentence there. The
operator merely inputs the variable items such as name
and address, which are then merged with the body of the
document. The advantages of a word-processor mainly
concern the saving of secretarial time. Typing mistakes
are easily corrected and letters printed quickly. The
editing of any text must still be directed by the solicitor.
Furthermore, word-processing places great demands
on the equipment in terms of memory size and speed of
processing required.
A recent development has seen the emergence of
support or event-driven systems designed to assist in the
co-ordination of legal casework. These programs afford
a series of procedural steps for routine conveyances,
recovery of debts, etc. Client records are permanently
stored on a database as are those precedent letters and
documents appropriate to particular transactions. The
essential benefit lies in the automatic production of the
document(s) relating to whatever stage the matter has
reached. Based on a word-processor, the event-driven
system also permits the editing or amendment of text at
arty time. The distinction here is between data-
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