By Legal Futures’ Associate Insight Legal [1]
Established in 2013 as a Sole Practitioner full service law firm, Parkview Solicitors [2] was incorporated as a Private Limited Company in 2017. The Bolton-based firm specialises in areas of Family Law, Immigration Law, Civil Litigation and Personal Injury and opened its second office in Burnley back in August 2018.
The Law Firm
Serving clients internationally, Parkview Solicitors offers specialist advocacy services to individuals, businesses and other organisations, with particular expertise in providing representation in complex tribunal appeals. The firm employs a growing strong team of legal specialists, accounting and administration staff.
Handling litigation in all aspects of civil matters for its clients, the growing firm requires a sophisticated legal software which provides cost efficiency whilst enhancing case and reporting processes, increasing productivity and meeting the highest possible service standards set by its experienced team and industry regulations.
The Requirements
Parkview Solicitors is employer to an expanding team split across its two sites in the North of England. The practice needed a user-friendly and centralised system designed to improve file organisation for its 16 members of staff and help them to manage caseloads and accounts easily and effectively through an on-premise platform.
Aslam Khan, Office Manager at Parkview Solicitors explains how the firm’s previous infrastructure did not support the level of access or functionality needed to facilitate their growing team and improve internal case handling and reporting processes. “Prior to our decision to change our systems, the team were experiencing the limitations of only one person being able to access the client account ledger database at any given time, with the previous limited Case Management Software and a network storage-based on premise server for document storage. This inevitably prevented the team from completing file allocation and organisational tasks quickly, reducing efficiency and ultimately slowing down the service available to clients.”
“In the past, we had also generally experienced restrictions in terms of scope of reporting within our previous systems. Working with our accounting staff, we agreed that easy reporting was paramount and this ultimately became a crucial requirement for our practice’s next software.
“We knew that our next chosen software would have to offer sophisticated performance and reporting abilities at a competitive price, so we began researching the legal software market for suitable solutions. As an individual who values referrals from industry practitioners, I was keen to listen to the recommendations of those already working off the software in the country and was directed to Insight Legal on a number of occasions.
“Being based in the UK, we were also conscious to ensure that our chosen supplier automatically met regulations such as GDPR, helping us to narrow down our search until we were finally introduced to the Insight team.”
The Solution
Insight Legal’s software offers an array of functionalities designed to streamline the management of case and legal accounts and optimise reporting processes for both its legal and accounting staff. Offering flexible implementation options, the system can be fully tailored to meet the needs of each individual user, with the team on hand to provide ongoing support throughout the on boarding phase and beyond.
The system also allows firms with more than one site to account for each office individually. With extensive reporting features, firms are able to run individual practice summaries, trial balances and cash flow reports to track and forecast performance in real-time, helping to monitor the financial position of each branch effectively.
In May 2017, Parkview Solicitors sought better performance from its software and migrated its practice over to Insight Legal’s case management application. “After a lengthy market research process with various demonstrations, calls and consultations, it was clear that Insight Legal’s system offered us the accessibility, case and file management features and sophisticated reporting we were seeking from our next system,” Aslam commented. “As well as being competitively priced, the team also gave us options to easily remove licencing, making it even more appealing for a small practice such as ourselves, where new licensees can be added or removed at anytime.
“The ability to integrate the software into our own hosted cloud server, as well as on-premise network storage for document generation created one easily accessible system which could be used by everyone situated in the office. When it came to offering the required features at a competitive price point, the solution really did tick all of the boxes for us.”
The Results
Since implementing Insight Legal’s suite of solutions, Parkview Solicitors has reaped a number of noticeable benefits. The practice has witnessed significant time savings and increased productivity through better document creation and filing processes, whilst improving case handling through a user-friendly interface.
“Our previous experiences with case management systems had often been tedious when generating and collating case files and reports, with staff reporting difficulty when accessing all of this data quickly within the system. In the past, these organisational issues had a huge bearing on the time it takes for staff to manage tasks and carry out work on behalf of clients.”
“With Insight Legal, we’ve noticed a transformative change in productivity across the firm. Its ability to improve file organisation from a centralised system has dramatically reduced the time spent checking matters, managing ledgers and digging out files, freeing up time for staff to concentrate on value added case work. The user-friendly system makes saving and categorising documents simple, making it clear to navigate and easy explain to new members of the team.
“From our experience, the reporting capabilities of the software simply cannot be matched. After easily migrating data into its clear and intuitive interface, the software allows you to generate a wide range of bespoke reports. These functions have exceeded the expectations of our accounts staff and managers, making tasks such as managing client balances, VAT and monthly profit and loss reporting fast and accurate with minimal risk of error.”
“However, it is not only the software itself that is exceptional. The support we receive from the team is also second to none. As legal professionals without IT backgrounds, reversing logged mistakes would typically take up a lot of time and resource in the firm. Insight Legal’s friendly team make it so easy for users to pick up the phone with full confidence that they will answer to guide you through any issues and help to resolve your queries in a matter of hours, not days. Their personable staff and quick responses make you feel like a valued customer, even when problems with your system occur.
“From the initial data migration stages to the guidance we still receive from its team today, Insight Legal has offered a faultless, cost-effective and supportive service and its system would be a great asset to any modern, growing legal practice.”