Lawtrac - Dec/Jan '98

Lawtrac

Lawtrac may be the corporate legal project management system that has been around the longest. While it is over a decade old, it has gone through several different versions and revisions, and today is one of the best-known and most-often-used programs discussed in this article.

Lawtrac's popularity is due not only to its longevity, but also to its specific purpose, and its ability to customize that purpose for particular clientele. It is a micro-based matter management system that can be used in either a standalone or network mode.

Lawtrac's basic parts include:

Matter - contains basic case information, including name, date opened, date closed, inside counsel assigned, status, etc.
Text - lets you enter more detailed information about a particular matter.
Docket - tracks important dates by particular matters, and includes a graphical monthly calendar.
Tables - for table management.
Law Firm - tracks detailed law firm information for outside counsel.
Vendor - tracks outside vendors (e.g., legal experts, litigation support vendors, etc.).
Legal Staff - tracks in-house legal staff.
Key Personnel - tracks both key in-house staff, as well as outside vendor staff and similar people involved with a matter.
Budget - manages the budget information.
Invoice - a file in which department reps enter all invoices coming into the department.
Variance - automatically compares expenses against budgets.
Time Accounting - tracks internal time spent on a matter (also has a useful graphical monthly calendar).
Patent - tracks the organization's patents (includes the ability to depict bitmap files, or pictures of the patent).
Trademark - tracks the organization's trademarks (includes the ability to depict bitmap files, or pictures of the trademark).
Quit - exits the application.
Calendar - provides you with a master calendar of all docket entries.
Outside Counsel - maintains a complete summary of all law firms (e.g., names, phone numbers, rates, etc.).

Lawtrac is extremely easy to both understand and use. If you're interested in entering a new matter into the system, simply click on the Matter icon and you'll see a screen with all of the basic matter information already entered. When adding new matters, simply click on a File/New item and you'll be walked through entering a matter's basic information.

Many of the matter fields can be easily completed using Lawtrac's table structure. If you come to a field in which you want to enter generic information (e.g., Matter Type) you can click on the Lookup pull-down menu and select Table. Here you'll see a list of matter types. Select yours by clicking on it, and it's automatically entered into the field.

Lawtrac might benefit from having pull-down arrows that pull up the list of possible table entries, as with other applications reviewed in this article, e.g., Case & Point. As it stands, you don't know if a particular field has a table lookup feature until you click on the Lookup pull-down menu.

A nice feature of Lawtrac's lookup tables is that they can be updated on an ad hoc basis. If, for example, you didn't find the kind of matter type you wanted to assign to a matter, you can simply enter it. Lawtrac checks to see if it's in the table. If not, it asks you if you want to add it to the table. If you add it, the table of matter types will automatically be updated.

Searching for Lawtrac information is simple. If you want to find a particular matter, you can click on the Matter button. You will subsequently be taken to a screen listing a basic template of matter information. Here you can click on the Lookup pull-down menu and select List. A detailed search template opens containing an alphabetical list of matters. You can scroll down the list, or jump to a particular part of the alphabet by clicking on the appropriate letter key (displayed across the bottom of the form). For example, if you click on B you will see all of the company's matters beginning with the letter B.

You can also perform text searches for any keyword(s) contained in a matter title. For example, if you wanted to search for every matter containing the term "Inc." you can enter that into a text search field, click on a search button, and every matter containing the term "Inc." will appear, regardless of its location in the name.

From the different files available, it is clear that Lawtrac manages a great deal of legal project, or matter, information. All of the preceding information is integrated so that different pieces of information can be extracted from different fields according to your needs. Additionally, customized information can be collated and generated using an ad hoc report generator, so Lawtrac users and-- more importantly--legal management can generate and examine whatever matter and summary information they wish to view.

Like the other applications reviewed in this article, Lawtrac can also be networked--using either a file server approach, or one of two or three different client/server options. In fact, most offices using the package would be wise to use it in a networked environment. Although for the purposes of this article it was installed on a standalone PC, a network installation would enable anyone on the network who had the appropriate usernames and passwords to access a tremendous amount of matter information.

Lawtrac's system security is easy to setup and manage. Users are assigned user names and passwords. The System Administrator can also assign which parts of Lawtrac's information a particular user can have access to, including whether or not they have read-only or read and write access.

Lawtrac Development Corp.
212-979-8920

By Cary Griffith

From the Shopper's Guide to Corporate Case Management Software - Dec/Jan '98