LegalTech PUBLISHING Law Firm Kpis and Reporting Tools User Guide

LegalTech PUBLISHING Law Firm Kpis and Reporting Tools

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The Law Firm KPIs & Reporting Tools Buyer’s Guide: 2021 Edition is a publication of the Legal Tech Publishing division of the Legal Tech Media Group (LTMG) legaltechmg.com.

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Welcome to Legal Tech Publishing’s 2021 Law Firm KPIs & Reporting Tools Buyer’s Guide
By: Cathy Kenton and Brian Dalton

As we conclude the 2021 Buyer’s Guide series, we take a look at Law Firm KPIs and the Business of Law.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) differ by law firm size and practice, but what is universal is the need for firms to understand performance. From revenue to client and employee satisfaction, now more than ever, law firm leaders need to be able to measure and evaluate key metrics.
The 2021 edition of the Law Firm KPIs & Reporting Tools Buyer’s Guide and Above the Law’s dedicated Non-Event page are your go-to resources for tools and best practices. Together they will help you identify and learn more about establishing measurements that will help you evaluate and improve your law firm business.

To your success,
Cathy Kenton,
CEO, Legal Tech Media Group/ Legal Tech Publishing and
Brian Dalton,
SVP, Breaking Media

CASEpeer Drives your Personal Injury Firm with Actionable Data in Built- In Dashboards and Reports

CASEpeer provides a plaintiff-focused, turnkey, comprehensive PI case management system to handle cases from marketing sources and leads to case settlement or litigation and the disbursement of client trusts.”

Company Name Brand
CASEpeer, LLC
Product Name Brand
CASEpeer

Latest Developments

• Simultaneously edit and update status on multiple litigation events.
• Improved user experience (UX) for calendar views, case index, and document searching.
• Added support for document versioning.
• E-signature support allows clients to sign contracts via text messaging.
• Integration with cloud-based Soluno legal accounting.

Roadmap

• Integrate CASEpeer with Tableau data visualizations.
• Build visualization features into CASEpeer dashboards and reports.

Unique Case Management Needs Addressed
Personal Injury (PI) firms have different needs than most other law firms. They operate on contingency fees, not hourly billing, work with and against insurance companies, and have many non-attorneys generating leads, vetting clients, and managing day-to-day operations. Most cloud-based practice management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms need customization to fit PI firms.

CASEpeer provides a plaintiff-focused, turnkey, comprehensive PI case management system to handle cases from marketing sources and leads to case settlement or litigation and the disbursement of client trusts. System tools allow staff to prioritize and efficiently handle workloads using calendars, task management, messaging, notification, document automation, and powerful settlement-tracking features. Built-in dashboards and extensive reports detail and project a firm’s business and alert staff to pending statutes, overlooked cases, and more.

Built-In Reporting for You, Not by You Out of the box, CASEpeer has more than fifty templates for dashboards and reports to search and apply filters, giving you thousands of data views. There’s no customization required to get started, and most PI firms will find the default settings.

Figure 1: CASEpeer’s fifty-plus built-in dashboards and reports are available from the left panel of the user interface (UI).

Out of the box, CASEpeer has more than fifty templates for dashboards and reports to search and apply filters giving you thousands of data views.”

and dashboards sufficient to direct their business with data.
There are three types of data views available from the user interface’s left- panel navigation: Management, Overviews, and Reports. All views have two layers of permission-based security for users and groups. See Figure 1 on the previous page.

Management data views report on CASEpeer workflows and status updates. There is a management view for cases, client trusts, costs, fees, and every stage of workflows, including intake, leads, discovery, litigation, settlement, and treatment. When you review cases, the software displays cases touched in the last 30 days and those not touched in a long time, showing the case name, when the firm opened it, status, and date you last touched it.

In a case view, the top of the home tab displays a summary of critical data, including contact information, preferred language, marketing source, and personal information, such as Social Security numbers and health data. The home tab includes a client picture and summary data in green bars that display a wealth of data.

This includes case age, pending statute of limitations, trial date, incident report date, property damage, health providers, medical bills, medical payments (MedPay), personal injury protection (PIP) insurance coverage, lost wages, and more. A PI attorney can get a good idea of a case’s value and project a settlement amount from the summary data.

Insurance and Medical Treatment tabs provide all the data your staff needs at-a-glance, such as policy and claim numbers, policy limits, coverage status, and adjusters’ contact information. The system reports historical data on insurance providers. The Medical Treatment tab shows health care provider bills paid and bills owed, which is often used as the basis for a settlement. This information feeds into the Settlement tab, where caseworkers track projected settlement costs, deposits, liens and costs, and net payments to clients.

Determine Case Status at-a-Glance Data management views allow you to quickly determine case status, its estimated value, and what’s required to move the case to the next stage. For example, the management treatment view summarizes all pre-settlement cases and their statuses, including pending demand, demand writing, and demand prepped. Filter the top view by office, team, case manager, and lead attorney, and update cases on demand.

Below the treatment summary data, CASEpeer lists each case in a spreadsheet view showing when you retained the client, total medical costs, MRI status, custom fields, MedPay/PIP, incident report status, lead attorney, and estimated value. You can add notes or tasks, get case details, and edit assignments from the case line item view.

For cases in a settlement process, view summary data of demands, offers, issues, checks issued this month, and those paid within the year. The settlement dashboard is a pipeline view of incoming cash, which you can filter by case type and attorney to assess performance. See Figure 2.

Figure 2: CASEpeer Management | Settlement report displays a pipeline of incoming revenue.

Overview reports display data on litigation, litigation firms, negotiation, disbursements, pending assignments, and settlement to help you identify bottlenecks.”

Overview reports display data on litigation, litigation firms, negotiation, disbursements, pending assignments, and settlement to help you identify bottlenecks. An overview of litigation provides a view of all litigation attorneys, their cases, and their status.

CASEpeer reports on all open cases and analyzes productivity, providing data on total cases, average case age, cases touched in the last seven days, and cases aged over one year. See Figure 3.

View case data with various filters, including case type or manager and lead or supervising attorney. Productivity reports detail total and average tasks completed per user and total and average notes per user.

CASEpeer analyzes closed cases with attorney and team data on total settlement, fees, costs, case age, and more. Reports also detail marketing source performance, lead and referral generation, and plaintiff and defendant insurance companies by open and total cases, along with totals for medical and settlement payments.

Closing case templates allow users to apply a rating. Data points comparing estimated case value versus final value will soon be available.

Hosting and Integrations
CASEpeer’s web-based software is developed on a Python and Django framework and hosted on Amazon Web Services in a secure, multitenant architecture. It is

HIPAA-compliant, supports a native iOS app, and integrates with third-party software including Dropbox, eFax, Intuit QuickBooks, MailChimp, Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, Office 365, Soluno, and more. The company rolls out new updates every three to four weeks and is looking to integrate with Tableau for customers to visualize CASEpeer data.

Pricing
CASEpeer sells its all-in-one software directly through in-house staff, many of whom have a legal background. Licensing starts at $89 per user per month, and the company’s e-signature software built with HelloSign is available as an add-on.

Who is CASEpeer?
Since 2016, Newport Beach, California-based CASEpeer has supported the legal business of personal injury firms with built-in reporting tailored to the needs of firms with one to 400 users. The company’s staff grew by thirty percent last year to support an expanding customer base in the US and Canada. The company’s implementation and success teams offer free training and support.

Why Consider CASEpeer?

• CASEpeer is a comprehensive, turnkey case management Software-as-a-Service for personal injury firms.
• All data reporting for PI firms is built into the SaaS—no customization or add-ons required.
• Customer success teams provide free training and support.
• Predictable pricing without long-term contracts for $89 per user per month.

Try CASEpeer Today!
See what CASEpeer can do for your law firm and try it risk-free at your personal injury firm with the company’s thirty-day money-back guarantee.

Figure 3: The CASEpeer report on open cases provides performance information with filtered views by team and attorney.

Filevine Enables a Firm to Organize Data, Analyze Productivity, and Track Activity in a Central Platform

The Activity section operates like a social media feed, intuitively logging all day-to-day activities of a project or case as they happen.”

Company Name Brand
Filevine
Product Name Brand
Filevine

Latest Developments and Updates

• Advancements in document management to navigation, upload, retrieval, and sharing enable users to improve file management and collaboration.
• Tag Management via tags facilitates standardization in how a firm categorizes information and simplifies the searching and sorting of data.
• Time Tracking feature integrates timekeeping into workflow via tasks, calendar events, Outlook, and more.

Organizing and Managing Information
Cloud-based Filevine manages data, activities, and documents for law firms, serving as the core and backbone of their legal operations, enabling a firm to track any information involved in the legal process. Firms can customize what data gets reported and develop processes and workflows, thereby generating efficiency and a central platform where all the work gets done.
The solution has standard integrations with Slack, Google Calendar, Outlook 365 Calendar, Zapier, Vinesign, and Domo. Filevine understands that firms may use a variety of tools and offers an open API, allowing for custom integrations.
Tracking Activity
The primary way to navigate Filevine is via the panel on the left. The options lead off with Activity, followed by customizable sections or tabs designed by the firm based on data that is essential to them. Figure 1: The left navigation panel shows the sections or tabs in a case. Activity is included in all cases, and the sections below are customizable. For example, a firm may choose to track potential clients, the overall intake process, or information particular to the types of cases managed by the firm, such as, medical files, wages, and experts.

Documents can be sent to experts or clients with user options to indicate who has access, assign passwords, set expiration, and specify rights to download and print.”

The Activity section operates like a social media feed, intuitively logging all day-to-day activities of a project or case as they happen. Activity types include phone calls, text messages, notes, faxes, and documents, all appearing in chronological order. The email repository allows team members to upload emails and eliminates the need for long email threads. The integration with Slack enables posting all messages and chats on the feed where team members can comment or respond, and you can assign tasks directly from any item. A user can click on the top right portion of the menu bar to bring up all tasks assigned to them. Filevine uses tags to identify activity types, and users can filter their views to see activities by type, user, and more.

The customized sections that follow Activity include data points the firm has identified to record and track. These sections can include Intake, Calendars, Case Summary, Case Notes, Time Entries, and Production Documents, such as for small cases where large databases are unnecessary or
cost-prohibitive. A firm can include many additional sections with integration points throughout the application. Whether it is accounting/expense data or lead generation, all identified information can be tracked and viewed in Filevine.

All files are cataloged in the Docs section, which includes a folder structure and OCR.

Users can send documents from this tab individually, as part of a zip file, as embedded links, or an encrypted URL. Documents can be sent to experts or clients with user options to indicate who has access, assign passwords, set expiration, and specify rights to download and print. See Figure 1 on the previous page.

Periscope and Dashboards
Periscope is the place to get a picture of firm performance. Built on Domo’s embedded analytics, Periscope provides the user with several customizable dashboards which the firm can fine-tune based on their needs. Each dashboard has visualization, such as pie and bar charts made up of clickable data points. Each data point will trigger a report, giving the user a deeper dive into the information, allowing for a more focused view of the data via Quick Filters. See Figure 2.

Dashboards include Case Management, Client Demographics, Projected Settlement Dates, and Cycle Time, and additional dashboards offer various configuration options. Intake Settlement can be configured for settlement or fees collected information, and display information by practice group, attorney, or case type, among other data points. User Action Reports track system usage and identify outlier behavior as the system logs all actions down to the second they occur. Task Reports give insight into employee Figure 2: Periscope Dashboards provide informative visuals containing clickable data points enabling users to do a deep dive into the information.

Periscope becomes the one-stop information center needed to track everything from day-to-day operations to long-term financial health.”

Task efficiency and productivity. Periscope becomes the one-stop information center needed to track everything from day-to-day operations to long-term financial health. See Figure 3.

Pricing
Filevine provides pricing based on the number of users and modules deployed.

Who is Filevine?
Filevine, launched in 2015, is a cloud-based case management solution. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Filevine employs over 400 people, has been named one of the Utah Business Fast 50, and is among the top 50 fastest-growing privately owned software companies according to the 2021 Inc. 5000 list.

Why Buy Filevine?

• Easily capture time spent working on projects to prepare for billing and invoicing.
• Maintain document and folder structures when importing documents into Filevine or sharing those documents and folder structures outside of Filevine.
• Develop equations between numeric fields for a final calculation field.
• Open API allows for deep customization.

Try Filevine Today!
Request a Demo to learn more. Figure 3: Dashboards give in-depth insight into financial well-being based on the firm’s needs.

All-in-One Legal Practice Management Simplifies Otherwise Complicated Processes for Busy Law Firms

Having all of our financial data available on demand is instrumental to our success and my peace of mind.”

Todd Spodek, Managing Partner, Spodek Law Group

Company Name Brand
MyCase, Inc.
Product Name Brands
MyCase, MyCase Payments

Latest Developments and Updates

• Collaborate securely and efficiently with internal chat.
• Effortlessly collect information from clients with digital intake forms.
• Sign and countersign documents with built-in eSignature.
• Connect with clients in and out of the office with two-way text messaging.
• Create schedules for clients to pay outstanding balances with payment plans.

Centralize Your Case Information
A multifunctional integrated law practice management solution provides efficiency and timesaving opportunities for a busy firm. MyCase is a software as a service (SaaS) platform designed to manage law firm operations and practices from client intake to case management to billing and invoicing. MyCase builds its helpful features in-house and lets you store unlimited data to support your firm’s growth. The service includes case, calendar, contact, and document management with advanced communication and collaboration tools. It also provides time and billing features, lead tracking, intake forms, client portals, payment collection, and reporting.

Dashboards and Case Opening
You can easily access multiple dashboards from a persistent menu across the top of the MyCase user interface and dashboard labels feature badges providing a count of updated items in their respective areas. The upper-right corner includes constant access to a global search box, timers, and a menu link to conveniently add any item including contacts, events, documents, and invoices. See Figure 1. Figure 1: The MyCase home dashboard features upcoming events and tasks, important alerts, and a real-time stream of activity within your account showing recent documents, events, invoices, and jobs.

With the client portal, you can explicitly share calendar events, documents, invoices, and messages.”

Opening a case is a straightforward process that includes assigning attorneys and adding contacts stored in the database or creating new ones. While selecting the billing contact, you can determine how to bill the client, e.g. hourly, contingency, flat fee, combination, or pro bono. Enter a flat fee at any time or, for hourly, simply choose the attorney and hourly rate or optionally create a consistent rate for the case which you can further override if needed. You can incorporate custom fields for contacts and cases and you can track case stages from start to finish. The case page provides an overview snapshot of all case related data and the ability to monitor and engage in activity as needed. See Figure 2.

To better facilitate the client intake process, you can send a preconfigured form directly from the case overview. The communications tab enables you to track calls, send internal messages to staff, and communicate with clients via the client portal. You can enable a portal at any time for an open case, such as when you create a contact, and clients will receive a welcome email with login instructions to gain access. With the portal you can explicitly share calendar events, documents, invoices, and messages with your client. In addition to the more traditional engagement with email, MyCase offers texting capabilities for quick exchanges to keep communications easily and directly linked to the case and readily accessible for review at any point. See Figure 3.

If your law firm has a process to address the common legal issues of clients, MyCase lets you create a workflow to address any such problems including a Figure 2: The case page provides a consolidated view of all things related to the case with tabbed displays for time and billing, communications, contacts and staff, and status updates. Figure 3: MyCase supports two-way texting with clients while in the office using a dedicated number and out of the office using a mobile app for Apple iPhones and Google Android phones.

To set up an installment plan, just enter the initial client payment, the total cost, and the time period and MyCase calculates the rest.”

Variety of items like setting a trigger date, adding checklists and tasks, document creation, and setting due dates. Simply assign the workflow to a practice area, delegate tasks, and create calendar events based on case requirements.

Time and Expense Entry
MyCase makes expense and time tracking easy with multiple places in the software to work with time entries. The “Add Time Entry” feature from the home dashboard menu bar gives access to a drop-down menu to enter the case and the user, further enabling you to make a time entry for someone else if needed. Along with the activity description, you can adjust the rate and task duration such as using the familiar 0.1 increments that equal six minutes and a simple checkbox to indicate whether the entry is billable. MyCase also lets you add time entries in bulk if someone adds time for you or if you record your time entries at the end of the day, week, or month. Industry experts generally agree, however, that contemporaneous time entry supports the most accurate approach.

You can create and save multiple timers to return to during a period or task. Only one timer runs at a time, so, starting one timer turns off another. Much like time entries, you can record expenses for cases with a similar look and feel but, rather than a rate and duration, you can enter price and quantity instead.

Billing, Invoicing, and Trust Accounting
For many law practice management (LPM) offerings, billing and invoicing software is an afterthought or clumsily bolted onto the case management tool. MyCase has legal billing software built in that includes time and expense tracking, invoicing, trust accounting, online payments, and the ability to create schedules and offer clients a way to pay outstanding balances over time. For additional flexibility, if you already use Intuit QuickBooks, MyCase offers active integration and synchronizing data into your account.

The client billing dashboard offers great flexibility to manage a client’s trust funds. You can create invoices, review all trust activity, export the data to a PDF, deposit additional funds into a trust, withdraw from the trust as appropriate to refund the client, and pay approved expenses and earned fees.

MyCase’s “Add Invoice” feature engages the invoice editor and fills in the client billing contact and open time entries and expenses for a selected period. That also provides an opportunity to make any adjustments or additions to preconfigured invoices such as adding flat fees, discounts, interest, or tax. You can set default payment terms in settings so the due date auto- populates to each invoice. If you allow a client to pay in installments, the invoice indicates the current amount due along with the outstanding balance. To set up the installment plan, just enter the initial client payment, the total cost, and the time period and MyCase calculates the rest.

Figure 4: The MyCase invoice overview is a dynamic report on law firm financial health and wealth.

The MyCase invoice overview provides a dynamic report on law firm financial health and wealth.”

The editor organizes time entries and expenses within a defined time frame and works with invoice due dates to drive MyCase’s invoice aging report. As the need so often happens, an item can be removed from the bill and the item returns to an open state allowing you to apply it later. It should be remembered that an item you delete is removed from MyCase and you can’t recover deleted items. The invoice overview provides insight into billing status to help you stay aware of or dig further into any unpaid or past due payments. See Figure 4 on the previous page.

Payment Flexibility
If you use MyCase Payments, an operating or trust account can be set up for client payments. Clients have additional flexibility to pay with MyCase’s client portal using a credit card or automatic check handling
(ACH). If the client portal is not enabled, send the client an invoice with an email payment link to facilitate payment via credit card. Additionally, law firm users can type a credit card into MyCase directly if they have the card on hand. Whether or not you subscribe to MyCase Payments, you can alert clients of past due amounts or low retainer balances using a straightforward “Request Funds” feature.

Lead Management
To help support business development efforts, MyCase tracks, manages, and converts prospective clients to retained clients in customizable workflows. You can send lead and intake forms to gather information, record each firm contact, and plot their status on a leaderboard as leads advance from prospect to client. You can assign staff tasks, set reminders, and schedule consultation appointments with leads as they move along the process. Lead management is built into MyCase at no extra cost. See Figure 5.

E-signature Convenience
When clients are ready to sign a retainer engagement, MyCase supports
e-signatures and countersignatures. Clients can safely execute agreements without requiring a visit to your office so that you can start work on their legal issues. See Figure 6 on the next page. Figure 5: MyCase’s leads insight report provides metrics on leads acquired and advanced to clients with data on conversion rates by referral source and practice area.

To help support business development efforts, MyCase tracks, manages, and converts prospective clients to retained clients in customizable workflows.”

Expansive Reporting and Mobile Access
Reporting provides a visual representation of a wide variety of a firm’s data including financial information to understand profitability and staff productivity, cases listed in filtered views, and the identification of cases with statutes of limitations. You can review collected and billed amounts by practice area and filter by date range and office location. An accounts receivable report gives insight into outstanding balances and case revenue by time range or user. An electronic payments report shows all payments made by credit cards or ACH. A credit card fee report shows fees pulled from your operating account. You can export reports to PDF or CSV format for secondary analysis or presentations.

MyCase supports mobile apps for Apple iPhone and Google Android phones and integrates with Dropbox to organize and edit documents online and offline. The software also supports two-way synchronization with Google and Microsoft Outlook calendars and lets you manage, send, and receive emails within MyCase using an IMAP connector.

Pricing
All MyCase features are included for $49 per user per month billed annually or $59 billed monthly.

Who is MyCase
Founded in 2010, California-based MyCase offers small and midsize law firms integrated law practice management software as a service with all important case details available in a single, organized location. The company’s
all-inclusive LPM feature set aims to improve the efficiency, oversight, and client experience of small and midsize law firms in the US. Led by CEO Jim McGinnis, MyCase topped Capterra’s Top 20 Law Practice Management Software from 2019 to 2021. With Apax Partners, MyCase continues to innovate with a dedicated development team based in San Diego and accelerates growth with focused marketing, sales, and support teams in Santa Barbara.

Why Buy MyCase

• Supplies client communication and internal collaboration tools including secure client portals, internal messaging, and SMS texting with clients.
• Sets common workflows for practice areas to complete client tasks and documents.
• Use unlimited storage for cases, contacts, and documents.
• Manages leads from initial contact to an e-signed client retainer.
• Uses a built-in payment processor for clients to quickly pay bills in increments or totals via credit card or ACH.

Try MyCase Today!
Try MyCase for Free to see how you can improve your case management, billing and payments, and firm oversight.

Figure 6: MyCase’s built-in e-signature and countersignature features reduce client and third party office visits to minimize staff and personal health risks.

Thank you for reading, let’s keep in touch!
We appreciate the time you spent researching solutions for your law firm. New products, feature updates, and announcements happen throughout the year. So, to help you stay informed we have expanded Legal Tech Publishing’s Buyer’s Guide Series to include an eBook for nearly every product category. Subscribe to receive notifications when a new guide is released. Follow us on the channels below for updates and special virtual events.

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