Ground-breaking ABS to implement Proclaim

Aspire Law chooses Eclipse's Proclaim Case Management solution

Aspire Law - a partnership between Aspire, a national spinal injury charity, and Moore Blatch, a personal injury law firm - is implementing Eclipse's Proclaim Case Management Software solution.

Aspire recently became the first organisation of its type to own a stake in an Alternative Business Structure (ABS) law firm.  The new venture will be dedicated to providing a specialist service to people with spinal cord injuries, creating a Social Enterprise Model which places clients’ needs and requirements at the centre of work, delivering a highly personalised service. The service could in time expand to include advisory elements around housing, education, care and rehabilitation.

Aspire Law will make no deduction of fees from the compensation awarded to clients and - as a joint partner - the charity will receive 50% of profits to reinvest into projects, like the Aspire Housing Programme which provides accessible accommodation to spinal cord injured people discharged from hospital who would otherwise have nowhere suitable to live.

The new ABS is implementing Proclaim across the business, providing a desktop solution for fee earners dealing with a broad range of claims.  Proclaim provides scope for the firm to expand its offerings into other areas, providing the ability to service the complete needs of its client base.

Chris Byron, Managing Director of Aspire Law, comments:

“We are extremely proud to be able to introduce an alternative way of delivering legal services to people with spinal cord injuries, which combines the legal expertise of our team with strong charitable values.  The decision to implement Proclaim was commercially right for us as a business; having seen how the system enhanced processes at another Moore Blatch business, Moore Blatch Resolve, we were confident that Proclaim would be able to deliver in line with the aims of Aspire Law."

Eclipse unveils latest version of Proclaim

Market-leading solution enjoys new look & feel, plus raft of new features 

Market-leading legal software solutions provider, Eclipse Legal Systems, has announced the latest iteration of its Proclaim productivity and management solution.

Proclaim is used in over 700 organisations by 20,000 individuals, for an increasingly broad range of requirements including case, matter, practice and process management.  This latest Proclaim iteration - v3.3.1 of the solution - will be provided free of charge to all Eclipse clients, under the firm's standard maintenance agreements.  New clients will also benefit from the solution, be it as a new implementation or as a seamless transition from the current Proclaim version.

Proclaim v3.3.1 carries a brand new look and feel - sporting 'flat design' to provide an enhanced user experience.  Users will benefit from even clearer signposting of 'next actions', in addition to a cleaner working space and even the choice of a range of colour schemes.  The feature-rich nature of Proclaim has been further enhanced, with new functionalities including:

• 'Infinite additions'; enabling system designers to easily create additional data fields 'on the fly', resulting in rapid bespoke screen building across the Proclaim desktop
• Multi-user access; empowering legal teams to work on the same matter at the same time
• 'Paragraphs'; a document building tool that provides fee earners with the option to pick context sensitive paragraphs from a pre-defined library of text, when creating bespoke or complicated documents (for example, commercial contracts)
• Enhanced desktop billing; including the ability to electronically draft bills, all within a user-friendly and intuitive 'bills guide' interface

Steve Ough, Chief Software Architect at Eclipse, comments:

"This latest version of Proclaim represents a significant step forward in our product roadmap, providing the kind of fluidity and accessibility that our clients - and the market in general - has come to expect from Eclipse."

The next level

Charlotte Parkinson, of Modern Law Magazine, spoke to Darren Gower, Marketing Director of Eclipse Legal Systems, about the need for a joined-up IT strategy.

The scope of change in the legal services market is far from slowing down and the market is still witnessing a number of new entrants into the market, as well as a sustained level of exits. In light of such fundamental change, many firms are looking to new ways of running their businesses, whether as Alternative Business Structures (ABSs) or through new, pan-sector partnerships and alliances. Though the initial uptake of applications for ABS licensing was slower than anticipated, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) have hinted that they anticipate the pace of applications to pick up now that the new process has had a chance to bed-in to the legal sector. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) have also recently been granted approval to license these new business structures. The ICAEW anticipates swathes of applications following official licensing approval and this decision could certainly change the shape of legal services on a scale which has not yet been seen in the sector to date.

But whether your firm is an ABS, traditional partnership or anything in between, the increasing reliance on a full spectrum, joined up technology offering is a key component in the chain of your firms offering and it’s certainly not going to go away. Whilst some firms remain set in their ways, resisting the need to accept that continual review and often fundamental operational changes are now a necessary factor in the daily running of modern law firms, others are beginning to wake up to opportunities born through times of such significant change. Effectively utilising your firms Practice Management Software (PMS), as part of a strategic business or operational shift, can assist in overcoming a whole range of issues that would be encountered if the firm was operating across a number of varying systems. Ranging from secure file opening and flexible CRM systems through to ongoing matter management and the ability to visualise key practice performance indicators, a joined-up software offering is of paramount importance to the future success of your firm.

Not only can a coherent, full spectrum software offering pay dividends for those who work within the firm, saving time and money, the likelihood is that if the inner-workings of your firm are well run and coherent, your clients will also reap the dividends. Technology can drive your firm’s competitiveness and in light of the flux in the market, could be the enabler you have been looking for to propel your firm to the next level.

Darren Gower, Eclipse Legal Systems, comments:

“One of the biggest issues we see – when being engaged by law firms of all sizes – is a piecemeal approach to software. Different departments using different software systems often creates chaos – there is no central pool of data or history to analyse, making your data – what should be gold dust! – nigh on impossible to utilise. By implementing a single solution across the practice, firms are assured of consistent data, a standardised quality approach, and access to meaningful – and usable – information for cross- and up-selling purposes.”