Lewis Brisbois is an Am Law 100 law firm with 52 offices across North America offering legal practice in more than 40 specialties. With numerous staff involved in supporting its lawyers, the firm recently introduced BigHand Workflow Management to streamline task delegation, workflow and resource management, and offer real-time data for more informed decisions.

Derek Lazzaro, Chief Information Officer at Lewis Brisbois explains, “While rolling out a new information governance policy, we realized we needed a uniform way for lawyers to delegate their administrative tasks to the support teams across our 52 offices. Traditionally, assignments have been sent by email, but it was time to modernize this process with a solution that makes work more transparent and trackable.”

Tommy Lewis, Chief Technology Officer at the firm adds, “Law firms are experiencing a shift away from the traditional ‘lawyer to secretary’ relationship towards a more organized and commercially viable support model. For our firm, the current delegation processes do not provide visibility to the types of work being delegated to different teams, or capacity levels.”

“With BigHand Workflow Management, we will achieve a new level of transparency that will enable us to make informed decisions on how to optimize the support offered to our lawyers. It will also allow for a smarter, more data-driven approach to recruitment.”

“We often hear support managers say, ‘everyone’s really busy, we need more resources’, but they don’t necessarily have the data to confirm this is the case. Having new insight will make it easier to base our recruitment decisions on the number of support staff and specific skill sets required for each team.”

Lewis Brisbois looked at several different solutions including an in-house IT ticketing system before deciding that BigHand was the right fit. Derek commented, “BigHand Workflow Management was the only solution that was dedicated to the legal vertical and built specifically around law firms’ needs. It’s easy for our lawyers and support staff to use, which will encourage quick adoption.”

With BigHand Workflow Management, tasks are submitted with a form that captures the instructions upfront, entered into a workflow and automatically routed to the right resource. Once in the system, the tasks can be tracked through to completion giving management the visibility needed to ensure support optimization. Underlying data is gathered regarding types of work, who is completing it, and the quantification of that effort, giving firms the transparency they need to make fact-based decision on utilization, training and staffing requirements.

Derek concludes, “In today’s competitive climate, it’s essential that we’re using technology as a vehicle to achieve real operational efficiencies. With BigHand Workflow Management, we have a solution that enables us to get the right work to the right level of resource, directly impacting our time and cost savings across the board. The insight that BigHand provides means we can make decisions to future-proof the support offered to our lawyers as we continue to grow and offer first-class service to our clients.”