Practice systems
Case study: AVRillo conveyancers choose Proclaim PMS from Eclipse
Based in Enfield, AVRillo is a family-run practice specialising in Conveyancing. The firm, established in 1989, is still setting the standards within the legal sector with its multi award-winning services. In addition to being an Investors in Business winner and a Sunday Times Award winner, AVRillo’s reputation for quality and expertise has been rewarded by […]
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The paperless office: dream or reality? 5 practical tips to make it happen
Small law firms have a significant competitive advantage – you can get things done! Large law firms like any large organisation have complex systems and layers of management. They are complicated. Small firms are not. Despite conventional wisdom, technology use in small law firms is typically more sophisticated than in large law firms for one […]
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Ten reasons to outsource your cashiering
Julian Bryan represents Quill Pinpoint Some of the most successfully run practices are introducing outsourcing as a core component of their business strategy. In direct response to regulatory changes in the profession and competitive movements in the legal marketplace, law firms are increasingly adopting a businesslike management approach, resulting in offloading back office functions, such […]
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Efficiency through integration: “joined-up” software is critical
Osman Ismail represents DPS Software. As overall profitability is ultimately a product of long-term healthy cash-flow, it is crucial within a law firm, as within any business, to be able to monitor this cash-flow accurately. At the same time, tracking your fee earners’ efficiency and assigning their time a financial value is equally important as […]
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Implementing a hosted practice management system
More than 2,200 UK legal practices and ABSs now use a hosted practice management system (PMS) with their system and data held (hosted) in a secure, remote location, accessed via the internet, in preference to keeping servers and software on-premise in their own offices. That is roughly 20 per cent of all law firms and […]
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DropBox – a lawyer’s perspective
For anyone who hasn’t come across DropBox, the strapline on their site is as good an introduction as any: “Your stuff, anywhere.” In (slightly) more technical terms, DropBox is a cloud-based storage service which maintains a copy of one of more folders on your computer. The clever part is that it also ensures that the […]
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The best of both – bricks and mortar and virtual
The coming of the much-vaunted information age, improvements in digital and internet technology, and the increasing requirement for law firms to diversify and innovate over the last ten years has led to a series of interesting experiments in business models for lawyers. Law firms (as demonstrated by the success of such firms as Excello Law, […]
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Quill Pinpoint: How outsourced cashiering works
Julian Bryan represents Quill Pinpoint The challenge for small practices If you’re a partner in a small practice or a sole practitioner, the challenges of business management take many forms. First, there’s the likelihood that you’re managing all areas of your practice on top of earning fees. The cost of employing dedicated staff for specialised […]
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Should lawyers Surface?
My new Microsoft Surface RT was delivered on 31 October 2012. Not since I was a young boy opening the box to a Dragon computer or a BBC Micro had I so anticipated owning a new computer. (I never got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64.) The Surface is a slick looking piece […]
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Paperless or paper-light?
What has happened so far? In previous articles I have described how it took Abney Garsden McDonald solicitors 7 years to go paperless. The things most people want to know are: Is it possible to go completely paperless? What do you do with the paper? What were the obstacles/problems? How much did you save and […]
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Video conferencing
A meeting held by video conference uses dedicated video conference equipment. Typically this is a “room based” system which is designed to accommodate up to 6–10 people. The equipment allows for “real time” or live audio and visual communication. Improvements over recent years in bandwidth, data encoding and system cameras mean that the quality is […]
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Microsoft Office 365 – for lawyers
Microsoft Office 365 is a suite of securely hosted (“Cloud”) online applications available now direct from Microsoft that has potential to radically improve use of IT for a wide variety of law firms, not just small firms. However, it may have an Achilles heel for users in the UK; nothing to do with the technology […]
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