Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers a workflow-centric practice management system (see article below), a new social network, free federal rules ebooks, a service for improving the bio and contact pages on your web page, and a free iPad app for business news videos. Don't miss the next issue.
A Money-Making Action
Regardless of the size of your law firm, your personnel fall more or less into two categories — stars and proteges. Your clients pay for the legal prowess of your stars. If we were talking about products, you would cease production of your proteges, and increase production of your stars. But we're talking about people. Even stars have to eat and sleep once in a while. But you can leverage your stars. The secret lies in transforming their legal expertise into repeatable workflows, enabling them to oversee the delivery of legal services rather than performing such services from scratch each time.
ActionStep … in One Sentence
ActionStep is a workflow-centric practice management system for law firms
The Killer Feature
Most practice management systems capture information such as court deadlines and time billed, but they don't capture your workflows. By contrast, ActionStep has placed a workflow engine at its core.
ActionStep enables you to create a series of steps for your staff to follow for any type of matter — bankruptcy filings, creation of a corporation, immigration applications, real estate closings, etc. For each step, you can configure ActionStep to automatically assign tasks to various staff members, send automatic email messages, require entry of specific information, make selected document templates available, and more.
Your staff cannot move a matter to the next step until the mandatory requirements have been met, thereby providing you with the peace of mind of knowing that your client requests are handled in a consistent manner using the workflow you conceived.
"Firms using ActionStep generally experience a 20% increase in productivity," ActionStep CEO Ted Jordan told us. "In real terms that means you could free one day per week per employee."
Other Notable Features
ActionStep is a secure cloud application so you can use it in any web browser. Given its emphasis on workflows, ActionStep includes document assembly technology that enables you to instantly generate documents using your matter data. It's even smart enough to use the correct pronouns (he/she) based on the gender of your client and others mentioned in a document.
ActionStep includes everything else you would expect from a practice management solution — time tracking and billing, budgets, file notes, contacts, calendar, email, and full accounting functionality. It also offers sales pipeline tools for managing your marketing initiatives and an intranet for internal knowledge management.
What Else Should You Know?
ActionStep costs $60 per user per month with no minimum term and includes technical support. You can purchase initial system configuration, data import, and training on a contract or hourly basis. Learn more about ActionStep.
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So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
