A spoonful of sugar may have helped Mary Poppins administer the odd dose of linctus to unruly Victorian brats, but even a flying, singing governess would have her work cut out making case management systems palatable to a bunch of sceptical lawyers. Time and again, senior managers with the best intentions to streamline their practices decide to introduce a new software system, only to find that the fee earners hate it.
Case management is fundamentally about streamlining – or re-engineering – a law firm’s business processes. If they are honest, the software vendors will admit that hundreds of law firms use their products as nothing more than a glorified document production system. One legal software veteran says that surprisingly few law firms have had real, bottom-line success with case management systems.
