If it is still relatively rare for an in-house legal department to seize the initiative in the development of law firms’ client-facing systems, it is almost completely unheard of for a company’s legal function to develop its own client-facing systems on behalf of the company’s own clients. Even more far-fetched is that an in-house legal team would secure financial support from clients to finance the development of the systems.
Yet Thomas Miller & Co has done just that with the development of its claims management system, OASIS. Described by one IT partner at a large law firm as “case and matter-management on steroids” and developed entirely in-house in a rare collaboration between lawyers and IT staff, OASIS is probably unique in that its investment costs were met by Thomas Miller’s largest client, the UK P&I Club, because it saw the benefits that would accrue to its ‘members’, or clients.
