Streamlining Legal Case Management for Government Agencies - Technical Discussion Guide 3

Streamlining Legal Case Management for Government Agencies - Technical Discussion Guide 3

Streamlining Legal Case Management for Government Agencies Using the Microsoft Office System

Technical Discussion Guide

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1 Executive Summary 4

Purpose of This Guide 4

2 Business Challenges and Solutions 6

Business Challenges 6

Addressing the Challenges 7

Legal Case Management for Government Agencies Using the Microsoft Office System 7

Benefits 8

3 Architectural Overview 9

Solution Architecture 9

User Interface Layer 9

Server Layer 10

Using a Legal Case Management Solution 10

4 Infrastructure Considerations 14

Software Considerations 14

For Client Computers 14

For Server Computers 14

Integration and Scalability Considerations 15

Integration 15

Scalability 15

Security Considerations 16

5 Next Steps 18

Resource and Skill Set Considerations 18

Case Administrator 18

Developer 18

System Administrator 19

Potential Partner Solutions 19

Solution Showcase for the Microsoft Office System 19

6 Appendix 20

Common Questions 20

Product Training 20

Developer Resources 21

1 Executive Summary

Government agencies, particularly those managing legal cases, are continually expected to accomplish more with less funding. These agencies are responsible for gathering and maintaining legal case information and working with attorneys, witnesses, and third parties to obtain case data. At the same time as accomplishing these goals, agencies must also deal with shrinking budgets, and adapt to increasing government mandates, such as the Paperwork Reduction Act.

Handling the flow of information can quickly become an overwhelming task. Case workers communicate with many people who provide needed case information in a variety of forms, such as e-mail messages, formal case documents, police reports, and hand-written notes. Case workers must review all of this information, associate it with related cases, provide it to the involved parties, and maintain it for easy retrieval, so they can efficiently respond to constituent requests for information. They often lose precious time and resources on the manual tasks of creating, finding, copying, and sharing case documents.

A software solution for legal case management can help organize a government agency’s legal case data, and improve efficiency. This guide discusses an example of a solution for managing and sharing legal case information, built on the Microsoft® Office System. Implementation details for the solution are not included in this guide, since they will vary with each user’s needs and components.

Note The example solution discussed in this guide can also be adapted for other organizations, such as corporate legal offices, that are handling legal cases.

Purpose of This Guide

This guide is intended to help decision makers understand how an information technology solution based on the Microsoft Office System can help their legal staff manage case workloads. It summarizes some of the challenges of legal case management and describes an example of a solution, and how a software solution can help to address those challenges. The guide also describes additional considerations, such as infrastructure and security, that a decision maker must take into account before buying a solution.

Since the Microsoft Office System can be used in a variety of ways for legal case management, this guide does not describe the steps required to set up a complete solution. It does include the following:

● A discussion of the business problems associated with legal case management

● An architectural overview of the example solution, and process flow

● A description of various infrastructure considerations, including hardware, software, scalability, and security considerations

● A description of the next steps to take to develop or obtain a legal case management solution built on the Microsoft Office System, including a description of required resources and skill sets.

2 Business Challenges and Solutions

This chapter describes some of the business challenges associated with legal case management for government agencies. It also discusses how components of the Microsoft Office System can be used as a case management solution, and some of the benefits of using this type of solution.

Business Challenges

Agencies that handle legal cases are challenged daily to increase their organizational efficiency to provide better service to citizens. Complying with government mandates can pose other problems, as agencies move toward requirements such as eliminating paperwork, but are simultaneously encouraged to reduce spending. The case management solution that an agency chooses must be affordable, easy to learn, and extremely easy to use.

The primary challenges most legal agencies struggle with are:

The E-government Mandate. The Government Paperwork Elimination Act and Electronic Records Management Standard that took effect in 2003 prompts government agencies to move away from a paper-centric environment for the sake of improved efficiency. Agencies that rely on paper are now working to transfer all their paper-based processes to an electronic system, a process which can be manual, labor-intensive, and time-consuming.

Disparate information sources and processes. Agencies and case workers need to obtain legal case documentation from—and provide it to—attorneys, the courts, plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses, and other affected parties. The data takes many different forms, such as hand-written notes, phone calls, and electronic documents, and organizing it for easy accessibility can be a manual, time-consuming process. Inconsistent processes between agencies and other parties can result in data stored in multiple locations, and case workers spending valuable time searching for and piecing together the required case information.

Keeping up with requests. In addition to the manual processes of transferring data to an electronic system, case workers also need to keep up with their usual responsibilities, processing incoming information, managing case workloads, and responding to information requests in a timely manner. Finally, as budgets shrink, agencies try to do more work with fewer employees and resources.

Addressing the Challenges

A software solution that enables agencies to manage these challenges should provide an easily accessible repository of documents for all case workers to use. Document revision history is an important feature of a solution when multiple users will collaborate on one document. The capacity to store and search a variety of documents and formats is also important. An effective solution will also provide task assignments, a means for easy document sharing, and shared group calendars for such things as court dates. Finally, it will integrate with other case management tools.

The example of a solution described in this guide is built on Microsoft products and technologies combined with a solution provided by an independent software vendor. Using a document management solution built on the already-familiar Office System, government agencies can maximize their IT investments while increasing case-handling efficiency, reducing paperwork, and improving the level of service to constituents. Agencies will be able to share information, including notes and diagrams, more efficiently, and communicate case information more thoroughly.

Legal Case Management for Government Agencies Using the Microsoft Office System

With a legal case management solution based on the Microsoft Office System, agencies can integrate a rich document management program with the software applications they use every day.

The example of a solution includes a central data repository for all employees on a case, a shared toolset for creating and maintaining documents, a workflow system to accurately route documents to the responsible people, and a means of eliminating some paper associated with case management. A legal case management solution can be built on Microsoft products and technologies alone, however, this solution features added partner components, such as a shared file site accessible from either Microsoft® Office Outlook® or a Microsoft SharePoint® site.

The capabilities of a legal case management solution based on the Microsoft Office System are outlined in the following table:

Component / Capabilities
Consolidated information store / ·  Shared file system
·  Shared calendars
·  Document versioning
·  Add document metadata for easy filing, searches
·  Easy retrieval of case documents, including notes
Integration with disparate external tools and processes / ·  Workflow
·  Roles-based access
·  Familiar toolset
Status information / ·  Task assignments
·  Visibility into case documentation and task assignments
·  Alerts and notifications
Compliance with e-government mandates / ·  Paperless document sharing
·  Paperless note-taking and filing
Secure data sharing / ·  Document permission control through Information Rights Management (IRM)

To obtain a Microsoft Office-based legal case management solution, you can develop one in-house or obtain one from a Microsoft technology partner. For more information, see the Solution Showcase information in the Appendix of this guide.

Benefits

A significant advantage to building a legal case management solution on the Microsoft Office System is speed. According to a market research report[1] on litigation case management systems, many organizations spend three to four years developing and implementing solutions. Reasons for the delay included a lack of technical expertise, the many manual steps required to convert existing data to the new system, and the complicated nature of the solution.

Using the widely-compatible Microsoft Office System as a solution platform can reduce the amount of integration code an agency will need to build for its applications to work with the solution. The Microsoft Office System also offers a familiar user interface that can help to reduce the costs of training employees on the new solution.

The example of a solution could also help agencies realize the following benefits:

Compliance with government requirements. With an online case document repository and electronic notes management, a Microsoft Office-based solution can help agencies reduce their use of paper for case documentation, notes, and communications, as directed by the Office of Management and Budget.

Case information consolidation. By keeping all case documentation in a mutually-accessible location, agencies can ensure that information is available to employees when they need it, and that important documents do not get misplaced or incorrectly routed. By implementing additional security features, agencies can also restrict which employees can view, edit, print, or copy documents.

Improved case management efficiency. With an easily-accessible location for all case documentation, a clear progression of the case workflow, and the familiar interface of the Office applications they use every day, employees will be able to quickly find and share case information for all involved parties, resulting in improved communications, faster responses to requests, and possibly faster case closure.

3 Architectural Overview

This chapter describes an example architecture for a legal case management solution built on the Microsoft Office System. The solution highlighted in the following diagrams and discussion is only one example of what a Microsoft Office System-based legal case management solution might look like. This chapter also describes the process flow of information between the client applications and the server components.

Solution Architecture

This section discusses a possible architecture for a legal case management solution based on the Microsoft Office System, and using Microsoft Windows® XP, Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, SQL Server™, ASP.NET, and Internet Explorer.

Figure 3.1

Sample architecture for a legal case management solution based on the Microsoft Office System

User Interface Layer

The user interface layer can include Microsoft Office applications running on Windows XP with Internet Explorer, and OneNote®. This example also includes a partner solution that provides a document management system.

Documents created in Office applications are stored in their native formats. However, the example of a partner solution enables users to enter metadata for each document. The documents and the accompanying metadata, including revision history, are stored in a third-party database, from which they can be retrieved through ASP.NET and displayed in the originating application, or a SharePoint site.

The partner solution also provides documentation management features that enable agencies to maintain case documents within Outlook, including organizing documents by legal matter, and easily associating documents with multiple locations.

Internet Explorer is used to view a SharePoint Portal Server site for sharing and maintaining legal documents. Such documents are stored in a dedicated SharePoint SQL database.

OneNote provides a notes management tool that can maintain notes in text, virtual ink, audio, or video. With OneNote, agencies can reuse and better organize their notes on legal matters, including typed text and digital ink.

Server Layer

The server layer of the example solution can include SharePoint Products and Technologies, ASP.NET, SQL Server, and additional functions from the partner providing the solution.

As case documentation is entered into the system, users can tag it with metadata, identifying the specifics of the legal matter and ensuring the information is properly cataloged and filed. Case documentation can be exposed in either Outlook or SharePoint Product and Technologies.

SharePoint Products and Technologies provides a central portal for all legal case information, including a customized site for each legal matter the agency handles. Each case site on the SharePoint portal could feature case-specific items, such as a shared case calendar, personnel assignments, and so on. SharePoint sites are the primary tool used by case workers to share information and collaborate.