Remote working

Xxxxxxxxxx Remote working

COVID-19 is bringing a host of different challenges to

junior law professionals, both in terms of their work and their mental well-being. Particularly as a trainee or newly qualified solicitor, working at home feels alien. A lot of junior lawyers live in a shared flats, which can add further pressure to the working day, particularly if you have 4 people sharing the already weak Wi-Fi.

A common issue amongst fellow junior lawyers is that they are expected to learn from colleagues, particularly senior colleagues, at work. We absorb knowledge, experience and skills from working with these colleagues in an office environment.

Most firms arrange for trainees and junior lawyers to sit with or in proximity to more senior people and there is a good reason for that: there needs to be direct interaction between individuals for the training process to work at its best. That is not to say that remote working makes such interaction not possible, but it certainly makes it more difficult.

Picture a trainee solicitor, new to a department, who is asked to work from home after only one week in his or her department or team. They might be glad to have interesting work to do, and might have regular communication with several lawyers with whom they are working. They are, however, already at a big disadvantage from not knowing the individuals within the team, not having had an opportunity to chat to them in the kitchen, or to be asked to attend meetings with the people they are working with (perhaps at the last minute). There are many examples which make it clear that this is very far from an ideal scenario.

There is a big difference between the trainee and/or the newly qualified solicitor, and the junior lawyer who has been with the team for a little while. The latter already has the rapport with his or her peers. The former is at a significant disadvantage in that they are trying to make a good impression from a distance, despite the virtual meetings.

So, what can we do about it? It is the responsibility of everyone in the team to ensure that the junior lawyers feel properly integrated, including the other fellow junior lawyers in the team. Anecdotally, the sort of things that can really help to keep junior lawyers integrated are the following: regular team meetings within a department, talks or training/ team-building sessions and offers for or from junior people to provide, for example, updates on legal issues, perhaps with regard to remote hearings or the law surrounding pandemics or unexpected events. This is a great way for junior people to use their skills to help to support their department, if they have the capacity to do so. Junior lawyers also shouldn’t be afraid to keep up regular contact with those supervising them, which is fortunately easy over the telephone and also over video, via Zoom or Skype.

Another common issue amongst fellow junior lawyers is that it they miss their friendships and the camaraderie of the office and feel isolated working from home. There are plenty of ways to keep connected with others in your team. Great ideas are organising quiz nights for the team, perhaps on Friday evening, as well as having regular team meetings. Even meeting up for a coffee break with a colleague over Zoom can help to make you feel more connected to your work-place.

It can also be more difficult to wind down after working at home. When working in a high pressure job, it is natural to want to unwind by, for example, going to meet friends, which we are currently unable to do. Developing a routine, eating healthily and taking regular exercise can really help with this. Although it is easy to carry on working past the time you normally would if you were at work when working from home, doing this can affect your sleep pattern and your energy and attention span the following day.

If you are feeling nervous about COVID-19, you are not alone. There are people and organisations available to talk to. If you feel as though you need some emotional support, you can contact charities such as Mind, Samaritans or SBA, Solicitors’ Charity (please see their advert in this edition). For further information on how the Junior Lawyers’ Division are supporting junior solicitors during the COVID-19 outbreak, please see our website. ■

Olivia Longrigg Solicitor Dawson Cornwell

Taking software integration from zero to hero

When it comes to software, attempting to be ‘all things to everyone’ is a naïve goal necessitating a never-ending journey. You’re going to have a number of software applications, from business intelligence and case management to document management and legal accounting, plus everything in between.

Central to any law firm is, of course, your clients and matters:

■ It’s your clients you need to undertake checks for money laundering ■ It’s your clients for whom you need to complete statutory forms and e-submissions ■ It’s your clients for whom you need to present evidence for court ■ It’s your clients with whom and about whom you need to correspond ■ It’s your clients you need to service as best you can

At Quill, we focus software development on integration relating to managing clients and matters. With our complete practice management software, pick ‘n’ mix solutions and third-party integrators, you get the right systems for optimum client and matter management. Whether you select Quill-only or Quill-and-other-suppliers, it’s best-of-breed IT with full and seamless integration.

Compared to running standalone systems with data stored disparately, integration streamlines processes, enhances efficiencies, simplifies administration, reduces costs, provides analytical insights, strengthens security, improves collaboration and more. These benefits add up to superior customer service provision. Happy clients who bring repeat instructions and recommend your legal services to others are good for business.

Let’s take a moment to think how you do your daily work. Your desktop is central, right? The majority of us begin, return to and end the working day on our desktop. It’s the central area behind the windows in our graphical user interface where we host shortcuts to our most-used systems and documents.

That’s why we’ve made integration with the desktop environment the focus of recent software development efforts. Integration between your desktop and our Interactive application keeps getting cleverer.

You can easily hop between a client’s matter in Interactive and Word or Outlook, and vice versa. With our new qSync application, you can send any documentation from your desktop to Interactive’s Document Hub with a right click allowing you to save the correct documents against the correct matter ready for reviewing or bundling (more on this later!) on another day.

Essentially, qSync empowers local working and global sharing. To all intents and purposes, you work locally on your desktop. In actuality, your desktop’s connected to the cloud so you work collaboratively as a team.

20 CENTRAL LONDON LAWYER We also cater for the trend of spending each day working in Microsoft Word and Outlook with our MS Office add-ins. Add-ins create deep integration between your Microsoft systems and Interactive database and matter files, affording productivity enhancing features such as auto-detected-and-stored caserelated emails, auto-saved documentation and appointment calendaring. A comprehensive library of all Word-and-Outlookgenerated correspondence is then readily accessible from your Document Hub.

On the subject of correspondence, Interactive Forms is our latest integration addition. Comprising an extensive catalogue of legal forms, you sign in singly to Interactive, edit popular and template forms from the customisable control panel, enter data once which is populated from your database to merge fields, and assign part or fully completed forms to the relevant matter in your Document Hub.

There’s a whole lot more to Interactive Forms than this, not least e-submissions to government agencies, document bundling for court packs, and sharing of forms with clients, peers and counsel.

Even better, choose outsourced typing for dictation via our Type App with typed-up forms saved straight back into your Document Hub. The bonus being that our pay-as-you-go outsourcing model can lead to 40% overheads reduction compared to in-house costs and you’ve got more time for servicing clients.

Taking into account the growing demand for remote working, due to court attendance and other off-site commitments, Interactive has its own smartphone app. This is another example of smooth integration in play. With an internet connection and using the same secure log-in, you can perform all manner of tasks to progress matters on the go. Functionality has pretty much the same capabilities as the standard version of Interactive.

At the outset of this client-centric activity is the requirement to execute due diligence with anti-money laundering and credit checks. Doing so ensures your customers’ identities are legitimate and they have sufficient funds. Our integrated AML tool gives protection against financial crime by enabling AML or AML-plus-credit checks during client set-up, with instant pass or fail status, and lifetime storage of results.

So far, we’ve covered only Quill products on their own and demonstrated how Interactive is more than just a legal accounts system. There’s Quill-and-other-suppliers as well. Our API with third-party vendors facilitates auto-transfer of data between the two systems. Whatever’s entered into the third-party system is auto-populated to ours. They operate as one.

We have integrations in place with various case management, legal forms, document bundling, compliance management and workflow automation software suppliers. And we’re dedicated to continued third-party integrations.

We offer these integration options on a pick ‘n’ mix basis. You’re in control. We sort out the integration accordingly. Every bespoke package is surprisingly affordable and comes with awardwinning support. ■

The only constant that the Legal sector faces now is change

The only constant that the Legal sector faces now

is change. Enforced change. Big Change. For sure, things will never go back to what they were. Many disciplines may flourish, such as Family, Dispute Resolution, Litigation, Insurance, Wills & Probate. Many may flounder, such as Residential & Commercial Property, M&A, Legal Aid, or Criminal.

Remote working is now taken as a given, staff reductions are now a given, huge pressure on cash flow a given. Some firms are seeing growth and upturn, while others are fighting for survival the longer this pandemic continues. Competitive advantage has never been so important in the legal services market.

Whichever side of this curve your firm finds itself in, there’s a common denominator. Technology is your solution, your opportunity and your future. Whether your case volumes surge and you rely on improved processes, automation and collaboration, or your case volumes diminish, and you rely on efficiency, agility and overhead reduction.

The legal tech community has been thirsty for law firm shake up for many a year. We however never wanted that thirst to potentially be quenched by such circumstances as those which have prevailed. Many a virtual Partner Committee Meeting, will have thrown up questions around ‘is now the time to sit tight and survey the landscape, or is now the time to be bold, progressive and invest in the right tech?’ Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Then there’s data to consider. It powers the commercial world and your law firm has no choice but to embrace it. In 2018, International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated the global datasphere reached 33 zettabytes. This is expected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025. If one Zettabyte equates to a thousand Exabytes, a billion Terabytes, or a trillion Gigabytes, the summary remains the same. There’s BIG data out there. Harnessed appropriately by your firm, data provides knowledge, strategy, synergy, process delivery, decision making, automation and commercial opportunity. Conversely, mismanaged, it provides waste, threat, risk, cost, pain and resource saturation.

In a recent law firm tech survey by TR, a few technologies did bubble to the top. One of the solutions perceived as most valuable included interoperability. Firms running, and paying for, many applications, each housing mass data, in disparate locations, in disparate formats, isolated in different departments of your firm, utilised independently. Agonising. It’s there, it’s rich, but not accessible. How do you unify this and harness the value it holds?

HyperLaw devours case documentation and provides agile tools for lawyers easily build, structure, file manage, analyse, crossexamine, internally collaborate, share, output and electronically bundle case material. All through a streamlined, compliant, digital journey. to Our application was built by design, through walking every step of a lawyer’s case lifecycle and engineering precise tech driven solutions.

■ Drag and drop an email with attachments also containing nested attachments in long threads of correspondence, whether PDF’s, Word, Plain Text, Images, Spreadsheets, PowerPoint and let it go. Receive a de-duplicated, individually broken-down string of your documents, auto-rotated, fully searchable and ready to analyse. ■ Pull in entire folders with thousands of files, or single documents from Desktop. Build at your leisure. Build at scale, without being charged for data usage. ■ Structure, sub-folder, document manage, providing simple access to quickly source case files. ■ Rename, re-order, remove pages, break documents with ease. Cleanse your documents ready for analysis. ■ Utilise our OCR capability & advanced filters to search documents down to granular text level, whether keyword, phrase or bullion. Find key evidence instantly from your entire case repository. ■ Scribble, redact, sticky note, annotate, link documents, arguments, evidence, through simple digital tools. ■ Review case workings and filter by colleague, viewing when, who & what, in regard to content and manoeuvring as needed. ■ Output workings through 1 click, providing draft advice to client, third party or counsel. ■ Electronically bundle with court ready bookmarks, pagination, indexing and hyperlinks. ■ Generate clean bundles for judge / opponent, but a fully annotated version detailing all your case workings to present directly from. ■ Add, remove, re-engineer, edit, manipulate any case content at any time. ■ Store, archive, audit, export as required.

One centralised, cloud-based platform, immediately deployable and accessible at a very favourable price point per user, per month. No hidden fees, just transparent, tangible value. Technology has never moved as fast as it has today, but never again will it move so slow.

Welcome to HyperLaw. ■

William Sturges LLP protect business from disruption with hosted solution

William Sturges LLP is a 40-user firm based in the

heart of London, just a stone’s throw from St James’ Park. With a heritage going back more than two centuries, the firm is steeped in tradition and as Office Manager Alex Bennett admits, their IT infrastructure was crying out for modernisation.

“We are a friendly, modern, forward-thinking firm. However, we felt frustrated with our IT set up as it no longer matched our ambition.” Alex said. “We needed to start afresh and look to the market to find the Legal Software and company that would relaunch our IT infrastructure allowing us as a firm to provide a modern, slick service in line with our increasing client expectations”.

Choosing a case management system

Alex was instrumental in the selection process, “I have been with William Sturges for nearly 25 years and was well placed to understand the needs of my colleagues. Over time I have got to know the nuts and bolts of the business and understood the expectations related to IT”.

Alex knew what the firm wanted and sought expert advice on the most efficient way to reach the firm’s goal of becoming more efficient, agile, paperless and supported every step of the way.

In November 2019 after a long selection process, William Sturges went live with the fully hosted DPS system. Making use of Outlook Office and Spitfire for their practice and case management, with Financial Director for their legal accounts and enriched by DPS Mobile and MyLegalSpace.

Support every step of the way

“We wanted to outsource our IT but knew that we’d still have local issues and having the support and guidance of the DPS Tech Team and Engineers as we went live with the system was invaluable.”

Alex added, “One of the things that has really set DPS apart is the level of support DPS have provided since going live. The data migration was a success, but like any system, the odd issue crops up after go-live. DPS have been fantastic at dealing with issues reported. It is not unusual to log a request, and have it dealt with immediately by the Tech Team. Every email and call is followed up, whether by the Tech Team, Engineers or Client Services.”

“All initial issues since “go live” have been resolved and the support provided has been second to none. This has given William Sturges LLP great confidence with our new IT infrastructure provided by DPS.”

Perfect Time to Go Hosted

Indeed, the timing of William Sturges LLP going live with the hosted system couldn’t have been better. Just a few months later, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak hit and businesses across the globe were thrown into disarray.

Staff at companies both in the UK and worldwide were told to stay at home to avoid the risk of spreading the deadly virus. William Sturges LLP were no exception. However, being hosted meant that business was able to continue seamlessly.

“Pretty much everyone is now working from home, with just the one person in the office each day. We were lucky that we had a few months before Coronavirus hit, so the majority of our staff were already trained and using the system comfortably at home or elsewhere.”

“That being said, some of our staff had not worked from home before and their devices had not been configured ready for Citrix. DPS Helpdesk were on the ball and did whatever was needed to get our users up and running within days.”

“During this crisis we have been able to provide our clients with the levels of service expected and we are taking full advantage of the “post office” function enabling our staff to see their incoming post within their home office environment”.

Staying secure when working from home

Something that firms also need to prepare for with staff working from home is data security. However, this is not an issue for William Sturges LLP. “We have MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) enabled, which is very helpful. Users are fully aware of their responsibilities as we are handling company data and workstations MUST be locked when unattended. Security is of the utmost importance and William Sturges LLP uphold this through regular training sessions across all departments. In the cyber world we live in today investment in this area is imperative.”

William Sturges LLP have managed to thrive using the DPS Hosted Solution, ensuring that when disaster struck the business could continue. They ensured that staff could continue to work from home just as efficiently and effectively as they would in the office.

Getting set up on social media

Why is social media so important

In today’s online world, a successful and engaging social media presence is crucial to any business. It is now a key marketing tactic for lead generation and, just like a website, social media sites are frequently visited by prospective customers to gather information before making contact.

What are the main social media platforms

The answer to this question lies in who your target audiences are. If you are targeting the general public then platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are perfect forums for the type of lively, interactive and ‘human’ engagement required.

If your focus, however, is business to business (B2B), then social media marketing should be focussed on cultivating professional relationships and promoting yourself or your practice as ‘subject experts’ in your chosen field.

LinkedIn is the most effective B2B social media marketing platform, providing professionals with an opportunity to connect and communicate peer to peer with other professionals in their industry. It also allows members to share articles, engage with professional groups, and recruit talent.

Twitter is another platform that offers a powerful opportunity for businesses to reach a wider audience and build meaningful relationships by posting links to valued content.

What are the best types of content

Social media marketing is all about getting people to engage with your content. It is easy to mistake social media ‘activity’ for productivity and to think that just by making regular updates you will see an increase in sales or awareness.

For your social media marketing to be a success you need to be posting engaging, media rich content that people want to like and share. Posts with videos and photos are much more likely to be engaged with as they naturally catch the eye and are easy to digest.

However, many businesses fall into the trap of just posting content on their pages without engaging. If your goal is to increase your following and spread awareness amongst a wider audience, you need interact by asking for comments and replying to questions.

Another easy mistake to make is the use of scheduling software and the posting of the same content across all social media sites without appropriate tailoring. Each social media platform has its own language and etiquette and ensuring that you understand and abide by this style is crucial.

How to go about getting set up on social media

If you don’t have much social media experience, the first tip is to not jump in too deep. Don’t overwhelm yourself with trying to adopt every feature that requires advanced skills and special apps. Stick to the basics and do them well, such as well written posts with quality photos. A good place to start is to think about your branding. Each social media platform will require a cover photo and profile picture. Whilst the sizing varies for each, they all follow the same basic layout so make this look consistent and professional. Your cover image and profile picture might well be the first thing a prospect customer sees when they come into contact with you or your firm, and therefore it is vital to make this first impression a good one.

Content generation

Posting the right content at the right time, is paramount to successful social media marketing and is a balancing act. Social media posts need a fun, human element, but also need to come across as professional for B2B marketing.

Engaging with prospects and customers via social media channels is less about selling, and more about building and nurturing relationships, through the provision of informative and relevant content. By regularly publishing content, participating in groups and re-publishing the information of others you will quickly build a following and generate leads.

Top Tips

There are some general tips for posting across all the platforms, for maximum exposure and engagement.

■ Use hashtags ■ Tag connections in your content ■ Engage with other pages by liking and commenting as your page ■ Be regular – a little-but-often is more effective than all-atonce or nothing-at-all ■ Invite engagement ■ Join industry groups related to your business

Social media as part of an integrated marketing campaign

For most companies, the best way to use social media is as part of an integrated marketing campaign. By linking your social media followers to your email marketing and content posted on your website, you will not only engage with a new audience, but boost your website search engine rankings, enjoy more traffic, and generate more leads. The two really do go hand in hand.

If you would like any help with setting up or managing your social media marketing the Waypoint Marketing team would love to help. Based in Winchester, we specialise in marketing strategy, social media and lead generation. Please do get in touch by calling Winchester 01962 862760 or by emailing info@waypointdigitalmarketing.com. ■

Hayley Coello Waypoint Digital Marketing