Small firm finds good work-life balance and elevated
client services with Firm Central practice management

EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY TO MANAGE THE BUSINESS OF LAW

A Thomson Reuters Westlaw™ customer for many years, Culberth became aware of Firm Central through her firm’s Thomson Reuters representative, who thought a cloud-based, integrated system would go a long way toward addressing the firm’s future needs. Like many small-firm attorneys, Culberth was caught between a court system that was transitioning from paper to electronic records and competitors who were embracing technology to gain advantage in the marketplace. To stay relevant and compete, she knew her firm had to evolve as well.

“We’ve always tried to stay current with technology and pinpoint strategies to keep our clients’ cases moving forward,” Culberth said. “Firm Central allows us to spend more time practicing law and less time on administrative work.”

Firm Central helps Culberth & Lienemann integrate calendaring, time tracking, billing, documentation, research, and communications into a single, easy-to-use platform.

“The integrated approach was a big selling feature for us,” said Culberth. “We really looked at lawyer time, managing paper, and our investment in paralegal support. Putting that all together was compelling: the efficiencies outweighed the costs.”

Before Culberth and her team began using Firm Central, they had trouble keeping track of document versions with everyone touching the same files. Having multiple iterations of the same document floating around led to confusion and inefficiency.

Firm Central not only solved that problem, but made the documents readily accessible in a cloud-based system. When the team is traveling or working remotely, cloud computing adds a higher level of efficiency and productivity to the practice that was never available prior to signing on with Firm Central.

Anywhere/anytime access is critical because many of the firm’s clients are located outside the Twin Cities metro, and that requires a fair amount of road time.

“Once the practice of law went mobile, the business of law had to as well,” said Culberth. “Now, when I’m at a deposition or hearing, I trust that my documents are accessible whether they’re physically in my briefcase, or not. There’s less pressure to remember to bring every client’s files during travels.”

EASY TRANSITION

Many firms transitioning to the cloud find it prohibitively complicated and time-consuming. But Culberth said her experience was quite the opposite, and that getting up and running on Firm Central was surprisingly fast and easy.

“The setup was pretty seamless,” she said. “It was a smooth onboarding experience to get our archives and current case files online. There was comfort knowing that Firm Central is a Thomson Reuters product. We’re confident with data security, IT support, regular backups and retrieval, and document protection.”

SMOOTHER OPERATIONS AND COST EFFICIENCY

Cost is another factor Culberth weighed seriously. To estimate the potential cost savings for her firm, Culberth analyzed the amount of time the firm spends on administrative and paralegal tasks, in addition to paper management, research, time tracking, and organization. They concluded that Firm Central helps the firm rely less on paper, integrate systems more, save time, enhance productivity, and access documents on the go from anywhere. What’s not to like about that when clients are the ultimate beneficiaries of smoother operations?

24/7 THOMSON REUTERS SUPPORT

“When you’re a small firm without an IT expert on site, we rely on Thomson Reuters support as if they were part of our team. They absolutely bring peace of mind to everyone in our firm knowing they are a phone call away to solve our issues,” said Culberth.