Has Best of Breed had its Day?
27th October 2003
Choosing "best of breed" with legal software is an attractive concept but can present dangers if taken too literally. Making IT components talk to each other in a reliable and efficient way is an underestimated science. Although software systems are becoming more capable of communicating, it still requires significant work to put this to effect. It's more than just the XML interchange, as depicted on a PowerPoint slide, it takes time, skill and energy; which equals money.
Law firms face more and more pressure to liaise technically with clients. That in itself creates a lot of projects – time, skill and so forth. What firms must avoid is the situation where IT resources are split and stretched between two goals. On the one hand trying to ascertain and satisfy external communications and on the other, dealing with electronic conversations in-house. It makes sense to minimise the drain on resource where possible.
For example, external projects typically involve Internet based reporting and instruction facilities for clients. Internal projects, with a best of breed solution, tend to involve different databases, from different suppliers, exchanging information and feeding each other. This could include the passage of time records, updating client details, consolidation of information for billing and so on. If the management of this internal activity is too demanding the external projects tend not to happen. With a unified solution this is not an issue and the technical resource is free to concentrate on activity that “grow the business”.
Nobody can argue against profitable links. If the required interaction is simple and the function of the other software component is powerful in it’s own right then “fill ones boots”. E.g. diary systems, word-processing and voice recognition. But names and addresses, basic case and accounting information etc. are crying out for true centralisation. My point is that, a unified database of the core information removes the need for a large band of the “project spectrum”.
A good example has to be that of the need for an effective conflict search. For this purpose there should be one, and only one, client record. Various methods for synchronisation now exist but why resort to such complexity – it’s only something else to go wrong. Also, it should be possible to access all records relating to all activity for all matters. Where rules regarding scrutiny allow, this information should be available outside specific departments and be part of a general enquiry mechanism. How robust and efficient this is with disparate systems is open to question – unless you’re a Power Point slide.
One central, primary database gives other advantages. Other, complex data may be connected in it’s best of breed home but the base information is available in a universal and uniformed way. This means the data required for reporting, both internal and external, is immediately available in one discernible format with one set of SQL rules. Law firms face increasing demands to publish information. Whether it’s to comply with a mandatory requirement or to fulfil a commercial obligation it’s still a whole lot easier if that information is in one central repository. Also, more and more of these reporting obligations are “practice wide” in nature rather than departmental; this strengthens the point.
Historically, the absence of good quality, combined systems hasn’t simply been due to technical limitations. In part, systems evolved that way due to the structural divides within legal practices themselves. Accounting systems, in particular, grew in parallel with the “very separate” accounts departments they served. Case management systems grew in a similar way. A third factor tended to be the specialist skills of the software providers. Software designers with accounting knowledge seldom shared the skills of generic case management providers.
There’s no doubt that “departments” used to have overriding needs for specialist software but combined systems of good quality are now available. Accumulated growth of knowledge and skills over the last decade has enabled experienced legal IT suppliers like Linetime, to evolve software packages specifically designed to reduce the need for hotchpotch solutions. This consolidation improves manageability and the fact that they are good systems in their own right, makes them more than worthy of consideration. Linetime certainly believe this to be the case with its new, combined database, system Liberate. The option to choose “best of all” rather than “best of breed” may not have existed previously but it does now.
Phil Snee: Development Director at Linetime Ltd Tel: 0113 250 0020