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Ginevra M. Saylor*

This article was previously published in the ABA’s Law Practice, May 2006.

Being a lawyer means facing tension between wanting to take in new work quickly and wanting to choose only work that is ethically permissible and reaps the greatest professional rewards.  This was as true for solicitors in Victorian London as it is today.  But, today’s lawyers confront more compliance requirements and fiercer competition than ever before and have information about their current and past practice spread throughout multiple offices, formats, and systems. Not surprisingly, many now seek ways to bring order to the chaos by taking a closer – or even first – look at how they manage new, on-going, and past matters.  Enter Interwoven and its recently announced New Business Intake and Conflicts Manager tools.  Probably best known in legal circles for its “matter-centric” document management and collaboration tools, Interwoven now complements its more recent Records Manager application with two products designed to help firms automate their processes and manage their matters’ lifecycle.

The separately sold, stand-alone products both rest on each firm’s individual workflow processes.  So, the first step to implementing these products is to visually map each step in the firm’s process for requesting and approving new work and investigating and managing potential conflicts.  The process may be as simple or complex as the firm likes, and ideally would include all approvals and authorizations needed to advance to the next step.  Once saved into the application, the workflow drives the user’s interaction with the New Business Intake and Conflicts Manager tools. 

Interwoven is not the only or even first vendor on the market with intake and conflicts management tools.  But, three features make Interwoven’s offerings attractive.  First, the design allows firms to change the underlying workflow any time, and see the change reflected in the new business and conflicts interface, seemingly without needing the vendor or other consultant and with minimal impact on the end-user.  Second, the “wizard-driven” tools’ look and feel is designed to be easily and fully customized.  Third, the design allows for multiple applications’ integration (none of which needs be an Interwoven product), meaning quicker results as data is searched where it lives rather than being exported.

From the lawyer’s vantage point, the New Business Intake tool presents a trim uncluttered screen clearly listing all of the lawyer’s new matter requests and their stage in the process.  Selecting the new matter (“wizard”) button starts the intake process; in the case of an established client information is pulled from the accounting system.   Lawyers then complete fields and answer questions that dynamically appear based on responses given.  For instance, describing a matter as a residential property purchase triggers requests for information germane to real estate and indicating that a matter is highly confidential solicits information needed to establish an ethical wall.  In this way, users confront only portions of the intake relevant to their matter and role in the process.  Responses are automatically saved when users move to the next field, a nice touch that protects against losing work if the system crashes or user forget to save before closing. 

Submitting the new business request triggers the next step in the workflow. Typically, for lawyers this will mean receiving an e-mailed link to a conflicts report.  The link brings lawyers to another clean screen with three nice features.  First, an overview at the top lists the search terms used, with each term hyperlinked to drill for more information from the source databases integrated with the application.  Next, lawyers may select a Spot Report to remind them of the information provided with the intake request.   Third, lawyers see the hits per search term, which also can be drilled into for greater detail.

After reviewing reports, lawyers may send matters to the next stage (for example, to a conflicts committee or practice section leader), using a nifty little feature to flag problem hits.  If the lawyer instead rejects the matter, the intake information is stored in the database.  When a lawyer (or other final “gatekeeper”) instead approves a matter, a code triggers the next step in the file-opening process and sends information to other relevant integrated applications, such as accounting, a contact relationship manager, and document management and records systems. So, a firm that has integrated all of these systems could find its intake and new file opening procedures significantly streamlined and the potential for error greatly reduced by real-time searching and eliminating redundant manual data entry.

The conflicts search functionality has a lot going for it too.  Conflicts clerks can easily review all outstanding requests and search one matter while others are running in the background.   Conflicts clerks are notified when searches are complete and when new searches are requested.  What is more, users set for themselves when they want to be notified (for instance, immediately or at specific times of day) of different kinds of events.  Conflicts searchers may add terms, set up relationships, add information from outside sources (like a party list from another firm), and go on-line for outside information.  Again, links can be used to drill for more information on any hits and clean the “noise” from reports before sending them to requesting lawyers or a conflicts committee.  In addition to searching the US Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals list, the tool also automatically searches the New Business Intake database for any last-minute potential conflicts.

At first blush, these products may be more likely to attract larger firms with more clients and potential conflicts to keep track of and bigger technology budgets.  However, though Interwoven had yet to finalize pricing, it anticipated special pricing options for smaller firms.  Some may also be wary of Interwoven’s Q1 2006 release date, shying away from being the first on the block to buy.  (Others may be comforted by word of seven installations in the US and Canada of the base-product).  But, for some the biggest drawback may be that they just have not yet done the groundwork to draw full value from these tools.  The products clearly work best in environments where intake and conflicts policies and procedures have been thought through and fine-tuned.  For those who have invested in laying the foundation, though, taking a good look at these two products may be well worth the time.

* Ginevra M. Saylor, BA, JD, LLB (Equiv), is the Director of Knowledge Management at McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP.