Prosperoware Milan is being selected by major law firms to enhance Matter-Centric Collaboration and improve user support.

Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania – August 2, 2010 – Prosperoware LLC, a software and consultancy company focused on balancing lawyer latitude with firm governance, announces the rapid adoption of Prosperoware Milan by ten AM Law 100 & 200 law firms.  Firms such as Duane Morris LLP, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, a global AMLaw 10 law firm and others have adopted Milan.  “The Prosperoware team is excited that we have quickly received market acceptance,” says Keith Lipman, President of Prosperoware.  “This is a testament to our industry experience and our ability to rapidly solve Worksite customer’s most pressing challenges.”

Milan is a platform that improves and distributes the administration of WorkSite and increases lawyer adoption of the electronic file, or Matter-Centric Collaboration, while allowing the firm to effectively manage standards and control risk.  Milan is a web 2.0 application designed for rapid deployment with minimal training.

Prosperoware Milan, the 2.0 approach to Matter-Centric Collaboration, increases adoption of the electronic matter file.  Milan, the Matter Centric 2.0 approach, enables lawyers to structure and secure their matters to fit the needs of the engagement while allowing the application of ethical walls or information barriers.  “Best Best and Krieger is very excited to implement Milan,” says Tim Haynes, IT Director of Best Best and Krieger. “Milan has simplified our Matter-Centric design while empowering lawyers with better management of their matters.” Milan puts the responsible lawyer in charge of the folder structure and allows him to easily secure confidential information to the matter team.  Milan is the only product on the market that allows firms to easily satisfy privacy requirements.

Milan’s Help Desk module improves administration and user support for WorkSite.  Administrators now have the ability to distribute limited administrative functions to the help desk, records and other departments; plus have new tools that simplify their job function.  “Milan’s remote check-in feature has provided us with a double benefit,” says John Sroka, CIO of Duane Morris.  “We have prevented lawyers from losing valuable edits while reducing the burden on the WorkSite administration team.”

About Prosperoware LLC

Prosperoware LLC provides a unique combination of consultancy and software to the legal industry.  Our objective is to take the practice areas within your firm to the next level through effective information management and governance. Prosperoware Milan is a single platform that enhances iManage WorkSite and solves multiple problems including: Matter-Centric Collaboration 2.0, distributed administration for WorkSite, information barriers & ethical walls, privacy management, and lateral file transfer.  Our goal is to enable your firm to balance lawyer latitude with firm governance.  We accomplish this by utilizing deep domain knowledge paired with our products, consulting, and industry standard platforms.  We are a privately held company, headquartered in suburban Philadelphia, with a development office in Chicago. The founders of Prosperoware LLC held key positions at iManage/Interwoven.  Our customers include many members of the AMLaw 100 and 200 such as Duane Morris LLP, Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips, LLP, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, Best, Best & Krieger LLP and Seyfarth Shaw LLP.         

After reading the Above and Beyond KM posts on Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFA), I decided to throw my 2 cents into the discussion.  A basic tenant of accounting is that if you simply lower your price without improving your margin (e.g. reduce the cost to deliver the service) or increasing the units that you sell, your profits will go down.  In the billable hour model, associates simply had their billable hour quota raised or more associates added, but in moving to AFA, the strategy must change.   

The move to Alternative Fee Arrangement will require law firms to focus on (a) turning the delivery of services from on-the-fly to routinized service products and (b) squeezing out the inefficiencies.  The basic tenant is that the less total time it takes to deliver the needed service the greater the profit for the organization. 
 

Think -- Service Product

The ultimate way to make greater profits is to fundamentally reduce the costs in providing the service by creating a product.  A service product is something that goes beyond a marketing brochure but requires an investment in time and money.  The key ingredients of a service product are know-how, technology and process.  

An ultimate example of a legal product is LegalZoom.  On this site, a consumer can fill-out an online questionnaire and create a will.  This is a traditional legal service re-packaged into a product. The client fills out the questionnaire and they are mailed a will.   

Clearly in a sophisticated transaction or litigation, it will be difficult to achieve this level of automation.  However, steps can be taken to reduce the effort level in any matter by automating those areas where a routine process can be developed.  The investment to create a product entails setting-up a standard approach, drafting appropriate model documents, and the application of technology.  Almost every type of matter has a set of standard inputs, a set of tasks that need to be performed, and a standard set of outputs. Firms that make the investment in creating service products will be able to provide high quality services at a lower cost versus today’s on-the-fly approach.  The result is the firm makes more money.

Squeeze Out the Inefficiencies

Law firms also need to squeeze out the inefficiencies so that the same amount of work can be done with less support staff and more fee earners.  With the result of fee earners spending their time effectively delivering services instead of floundering with wasteful tasks.  Here are some ideas: 

• File email into an Electronic Matter File -- the result improves the information flow and reduces the extra effort of filing and reading superfluous emails.  Copying an entire matter team on every email means that every member of the team has to spend time reading each email and taking some type of action (delete, file, etc.).  This wastes valuable time.  With an electronic file, fee earners can come up to speed on matters as needed when they are given a task.
• Reduce Offsite storage costs -- image all paper before it goes to off-site storage.  It is cheap to store information offsite but expensive to retrieve it. 
• Improve Document Drafting Process -- losing an hour to a mis-behaving document is painful when you are billing by the hour but it is a whole lot worse with a fixed fee.
• Less Printers -- Do you really need all those printers especially if people are filing information electronically?
• Enterprise Search --- the ability to put your hands on the right information at the right time is paramount.

If you have more ideas, please leave a comment.