Designing law practice management systems

Designing a law practice management system is not as simple as documenting your office management procedures or your risk management systems (see here).

A comprehensive system will consider the matters identified by ISO 9000: 2000 as interpreted by Law 9000.

The system should deal with:

• Customer focus and customer satisfaction;
• Leadership;
• People;
• Process management;
• Continual improvement;
• Decision making; and
• Supplier relationships.

Connecting all of these issues is the Plan, Do, Check, Act model which deals with

• Interaction of processes;
• Analysing data;
• Outsourcing controls;
• Including support services as part of client services;
• Ensuring the processes are effective;
• Ensuring the availability of resources;
• Continual improvement.

It also discusses:

• document controls;
• record controls (client instructions, meeting notes, reports, professional negligence, notifications, storage and backups);
• management commitment;
• customer focus;
• quality review, file audits and reviews;
• purchasing;
• looking after client property.