Legal case management
Encyclopedia
The terms Legal case management (LCM) or matter management refer to a subset of law practice management and cover a range of approaches and technologies used by law firms and courts to leverage knowledge and methodologies for managing the life cycle of a case or matter more effectively. Generally, the terms refer to the sophisticated information management and workflow practices that are tailored to meet the legal field's specific needs and requirements.

As attorneys and law firms compete for clients they are routinely challenged to deliver services at lower costs with greater efficiency, thus firms develop practice-specific processes and utilize contemporary technologies to assist in meeting such challenges. Law practice management processes and technologies include case and matter management, time and billing, litigation support, research, communication and collaboration, data mining and modeling, and data security, storage, and archive accessibility.

Case management software

Legal case or matter management software has two primary functions: it helps to better use, manage, consolidate, share, and protect information, and it tracks and shapes the business process. Because the most useful forms of such software can integrate data from multiple systems, departments, users, and business entities, its use can increase a firm's business advantage.

Case or matter management systems having the capacity to push and pull data over the Internet, whether within the software itself or within an integrated software framework or environment became an industry standard with the advent of the Lexis
LexisNexis
LexisNexis Group is a company providing computer-assisted legal research services. In 2006 it had the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information...

 and Westlaw
Westlaw
Westlaw is one of the primary online legal research services for lawyers and legal professionals in the United States and is a part of West. In addition, it provides proprietary database services...

 legal research platforms.

Case management software is marketed to specific segments of the legal marketplace, with some products designed for small firms and others for large multinational firms, and a few claim to be scalable to all. Cost-containment and competition concerns facing small-to-mid-size firms that cannot afford a full-time IT staff often drive custom solutions incorporating multiple integrated products.

Case management in the U.S. federal courts

As electronic court systems continue to increase their online presence, many now require case filings to be accomplished electronically. Many legal software vendors' products include the ability to take advantage of such electronic filing by pulling data from the case management product and pushing it into court filing systems.

e-Discovery systems

In litigation, the discovery process often results in enormous amounts of information that must be managed, and with the revision of the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern civil procedure in United States district courts. The FRCP are promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, and then the United States Congress has 7 months to veto the rules promulgated or they become part of the...

 in 2006 to include electronic means of discovery came a new subset of case management systems that incorporated those changes, often dubbed 'electronic evidence' or 'e-discovery' management systems. Since the new rules took effect, e-Discovery firms as outside service vendors have flourished.

Case management and the regulation of mediation in Australia

The term case management is also used to refer to systems in which court or tribunal officials assume closer administrative control over the litigation process than is traditionally associated with common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

 litigation. The Assisted Dispute Resolution program was introduced into the Federal Court
Federal Court of Australia
The Federal Court of Australia is an Australian superior court of record which has jurisdiction to deal with most civil disputes governed by federal law , along with some summary criminal matters. Cases are heard at first instance by single Judges...

 in 1990 after a number of cases failed to reach resolutions having several directional hearings. In those cases the parties were not able to isolate the issues requiring determination. With the new program, judges can refer the parties to a court registrar for mediation. The following section was introduced into the Federal Court of Australia
Federal Court of Australia
The Federal Court of Australia is an Australian superior court of record which has jurisdiction to deal with most civil disputes governed by federal law , along with some summary criminal matters. Cases are heard at first instance by single Judges...

 Act in 1991:
In Australia, mediation as an alternative dispute resolution
Alternative dispute resolution
Alternative Dispute Resolution includes dispute resolution processes and techniques that act as a means for disagreeing parties to come to an agreement short of litigation. ADR basically is an alternative to a formal court hearing or litigation...

 (ADR) method is designed to avoid resorting to formal court-based adjudication and is now also being applied to criminal matters. Traditional theories of criminal justice view the matter as one between the offender and the state.

It is not necessary to have the parties consent to the mediation process and a judge can direct the mediation. In this sense, case management is designed to identify and define issues in dispute and to reduce delays, costs and unnecessary pre-trial activities.
‘[W]hat was born of resistance and opposition to the formal justice system has been extensively integrated and co-opted into the system’.

See also

  • Community of practice
    Community of practice
    A community of practice is, according to cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession. The group can evolve naturally because of the members' common interest in a particular domain or area, or it can be created...

  • Competitive intelligence
    Competitive intelligence
    A broad definition of competitive intelligence is the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.Key...

  • Complexity theory and organizations
    Complexity theory and organizations
    Complexity theory and organizations, also called complexity strategy or complex adaptive organization, is the use of Complexity theory in the field of strategic management and organizational studies.- Overview :...

  • Computer-supported collaboration
    Computer-supported collaboration
    Computer-supported collaboration research focuses on technology that affects groups, organizations, communities and societies, e.g., voice mail and text chat. It grew from cooperative work study of supporting people's work activities and working relationships...

  • Corporate memory
  • e-learning
    E-learning
    E-learning comprises all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching. The information and communication systems, whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process...

  • Enterprise content management
    Enterprise content management
    Enterprise Content Management is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization's documents, and other content, that relate to the organization's processes...

  • Enterprise search
    Enterprise search
    Enterprise search is the practice of making content from multiple enterprise-type sources, such as databases and intranets, searchable to a defined audience.-Enterprise search summary:...

  • Enterprise social software
    Enterprise social software
    Enterprise social software , comprises social software as used in "enterprise" contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to corporate intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication...

  • Expert system
    Expert system
    In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...

  • Information management
    Information management
    Information management is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information...

  • Intellectual capital
    Intellectual capital
    The value of an enterprise is made of physical assets, various financial assets and, finally, intangible assets, i.e., intellectual capital . The term intellectual capital conventionally refers to the difference in value between tangible assets and market value. ....

  • Knowledge
    Knowledge
    Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...


  • Knowledge ecosystems
  • Knowledge base
    Knowledge base
    A knowledge base is a special kind of database for knowledge management. A Knowledge Base provides a means for information to be collected, organised, shared, searched and utilised.-Types:...

  • Knowledge management for development
  • Knowledge sharing
    Knowledge sharing
    Knowledge sharing is an activity through which knowledge is exchanged among people, friends, or members of a family, a community or an organization....

  • Knowledge transfer
    Knowledge transfer
    Knowledge transfer in the fields of organizational development and organizational learning is the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to another part of the organization. Like Knowledge Management, Knowledge transfer seeks to organize, create, capture or...

  • Law
    Law
    Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

  • Law practice management software
    Law practice management software
    Law Practice Management software is software designed to manage a law firm's case and client records, billing and bookkeeping, schedules and appointments, deadlines, computer files and to facilitate any compliance requirements such as with document retention policies, courts' electronic filing...

  • Legal matter management
    Legal Matter Management
    Legal Matter Management or Matter Management refers to activities involved in managing all aspects of the corporate legal practice . Matter Management is distinguished from Case Management, in that Case Management is generally considered to refer to law firm related activities...

  • Organizational learning
    Organizational learning
    Organizational learning is an area of knowledge within organizational theory that studies models and theories about the way an organization learns and adapts....

  • Personal knowledge management
    Personal knowledge management
    Personal knowledge management refers to a collection of processes that an individual carries out to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve, and share knowledge in his/her daily activities and how these processes support work activities...

  • Procedural knowledge
    Procedural knowledge
    Procedural knowledge, also known as imperative knowledge, is the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task. See below for the specific meaning of this term in cognitive psychology and intellectual property law....


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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