Are Case Management Systems Too Tech Focussed?

I’ve just sat through another whistle-stop overview of yet another case management system which is supposed to be the fee earner friend.

If it is a friend, it’s a very needy one.

It does lots of things. But is that what we really need? The practice management team clearly think so. Largely consisting of non-lawyers, I expect they were well and truly dazzled by the sheer extent of the functions the new case management system can perform.

The problem is that it’s the fee earner who has to perform them. Every administrative function has a time cost, and even with practice, the time spent performing all of these tasks is going to eat into fee-earning time, which is, or should be, the primary function of a fee earner.

At the end of the meeting, which lasted a couple of hours, we all sat there in silence. When the inevitable, ‘Anyone got any questions? ‘ was raised, this was the only one – does it make tea?

We all laughed. I wonder if we’ll still be so amused when it goes live.

Technology has its place. But we should be trying to reduce, not increase the number of non-fee generating functions a fee earner is expected to perform and let the fee earners focus on what they’re ostensibly there to do.