Law Department Technology Planning and Implementation Services

Cost effective tools built around best practices enable the efficient management of legal matters. Our team can continue beyond your project's process review and design phases and deliver the underlying technical tasks to ensure a complete solution with continuity as well as cost savings throughout your project.

Product Vendor Selection
Duff & Phelps will start by conducting a quick review of your current system in order to understand how you are using it today. Next, we will determine and prioritize the needs and expectations for the future system. Using this information and our industry knowledge, we will match your expectations to qualified vendors. We will work with you to prepare demo scripts and scorecards for evaluating the vendors at their demonstrations. Afterwards, we can also help with the Request for Proposal process.

System Design
The system design phase begins by meeting with legal department experts within each practice area to document the current processes and determine future system requirements. As the meetings progress detailed design documents will be created by Duff & Phelps consultants. Using our extensive knowledge of the leading systems, the documents will be written to incorporate the functionality of the selected system. The fields, lookup values, screen design, business rules, workflow and security will be detailed in the design documents. These documents are used throughout the design phase and eventually become the sign-off documents used to perform the build.

System Build
One of the things that set Duff & Phelps apart is our ability to go beyond the design and into the technical phase of system build. Our consultants have technical backgrounds and can work with your team as requested to perform the build tasks. If your team is involved in the system build, we will train them on the product so that you are capable of fully supporting the system after go live.

System Integration
Duff & Phelps consultants will work with internal personnel or system vendors to determine the requirements for each integration. After the requirements are documented and approved, we will program and thoroughly test each integration. We have extensive experience writing integrations between legal systems and other systems including Accounts Payable, HR/Payroll, Timekeeping, General Ledger Document Management and Electronic Invoicing.

Data Mapping & Conversion
Our expertise in this area is unmatched. We have successfully completed large scale conversions where others have failed. We are selected to perform conversion tasks on large projects due to our reputation for quick, accurate conversions. Duff & Phelps consultants will prepare a detailed field-level document mapping your current data into the new data fields. We will identify data cleanup issues and assist you by automating the cleanup process. We will write conversion programs to load your existing data into the new system format ensuring a minimal system down-time.

Report Writing
Duff & Phelps consultants understand legal department reporting. Our functional experience helps us to understand your requirements. Our technical experience allows us to create the complex universes and reports that you need. We have extensive experience creating hundreds of legal department reports using tools such as Business Objects and Crystal Reports.

Training
We will develop custom training materials focused on the specific needs of your user population. Manuals can be customized for practice arrears or user types. Duff & Phelps also offers Train-the-Trainer, End-User, Administrator and Developer classes.

Project Management
Duff & Phelps consultants are capable of leading or augmenting your project management team. We have experience leading large scale legal projects worth millions of dollars. Our ability to communicate with IT and Legal allows us to effectively manage and work with all involved parties.

System Support
Many of the systems we implement are complex. With our onsite or offsite support you will always be able to take full advantage of your system. Duff & Phelps can step in as a backup resource or supplement to your support team. Throughout the life of the system, we will continue to help you enhance and modify your system to accommodate for your changing business needs.

Custom Development
Custom systems or tools can be developed by Duff & Phelps consultants as stand-alone applications or as supplements to your current systems.