Pains and gains of law companies in resources management:

An interwiew with managing partners of leading companies

Marina Postrelko

This article contains current problems, related to the business automation necessity, which the law sector management in Ukraine is faced with in the everyday business routine

Digital Transformation Agency “Btegrico” had a great conversation with the managing partners in the Ukrainian legal companies: Sergey Papernyk, Head of Banking & Finance, Head of FinTech at EVRIS LAW Firm, Vagif Mallayev, Founder and Managing Partner at LEXCELLENCE Law Office, Evgenii Starchuk, Lawyer and Partner at BSB Partners and Dmitriy Latyshenko, Chief Legal Officer at Wikr Group.

During the interview, we have defined few organizational issues, that cause significant difficulties and impede the business processes functioning in companies. By the discussion, it has been found that most of the interviewed firms inefficiently use existing software, and some of them do not use it at all. Besides the legal aspect of their work, specialists constantly face organizational difficulties, which take time and effort.

So, which instruments are required to optimize business processes in law companies?

- In the terms of Finance: costs monitoring for a particular case (project), assessment of project’s profitability, case’s directions, employees, time-billing possibility in a single system, detailed analytics of all the financial indexes.

- In the Project terms: tracking plans and staff workload, transfer tasks, monitoring the implementation, as well as the time spent on the task, all projects overall control, indicating responsible and deadlines, the current tasks’ status.

- In the terms of Customer Relationship Management: clients’ contacts storing, his employees and the interaction history (meetings, calls, chats, projects, sales).

A noteworthy detail is that a convenient, simple and fast software interface, which does not require from employee vast time and efforts expenditures, takes on greater and greater importance.

What do law firms managing partners think about their business automation?

Vagif Mallayev

Founder and Managing Partner at LEXCELLENCE Law Office.

“Considering the legal services specificity, it is the most important for us to have the 3 main modules in the ERP-system: CRM + HR + Projects. CRM for us consists of the clients, time billing - an opportunity to track the employee’s each case time consumption. In the terms of HR module, we need to be able to keep the HR details, salary, bonuses in the single system. The most complicated block is the team management on the project, that is why we use some apps like Wrike, Basecamp.”

Sergey Papernyk

Head of Banking & Finance, Head of FinTech at EVRIS LAW Firm.

“Implementing the modern software solutions, such as CRM/ERP-systems is a very good initiative. In our company we try to use different options, but, unfortunately, we haven’t found our own ideal yet. In the terms of CRM even for big companies, social media integration is a very important thing (Landing promotion by the SMM, sales funnels etc). In the terms of Project Management, the vital matter gains the interface. It should be very simple and quick. Filling the small cells with the data like in 1S System is the real waste of time, in the end, everybody missed that thing because of lack of time. The same situation is about the Task Management - it should be created in 1 click and the few words and transferred, accomplished, postponed in one swipe. The ideal interaction case for me is Trello software, but it still has pure functions and lack of analytics. It is obviously must have an email integration not only with Gmail but also Outlook and calendar.”

Evgenii Starchuk

Lawyer and Partner at BSB Partners.

“Within our business activity the main organizational block is HR management, task transferring, supervising its implementation, time-billing etc. In the terms of financial relationships with clients (basically accounting), we use the 1S software. It is very important for us to monitor costs for a particular case and to control all the cases in progress, the indication of the responsible, deadlines, the amount of money spent and the current working status. I dislike that software solution, which I have been testing, as it wasn’t as functional as I needed. That is why it is easier for me to use cloud services rather than a program.

For now, we prevalently use Trello and 1S services: 1S mainly for accounting and for task-management - Trello.”

Dmitriy Latyshenko

Chief Legal Officer at Wikr Group.

“Bear in mind the high importance of docflow management, for example, the procedure for reconciliation, endorsement of documents with documents’ revision history preservation. In other prospects ERP/CRM system modules let us keep records of main financial metrics, track the employee’s time expenditure for a particular task - so we are able to establish the transparent billing for the client, monitor plans, and current staff load, control all the on-going cases, defining the responsible one, deadlines and current status in the single system, which enable us to save employees’ time and focus on the important tasks.”

Summary

Analyzing our conversation with the managing partners of well-known legal companies we can notice the inceptive understanding of the necessity to use single software solution, integrated all the essential parts of the business:

- Time-billing;

- Financial metrics recording;

- Team & Project management;

- HR issues (vacations, sick leaves, bonuses);

- The docflow

The correctly selected program lets to minimize specialist’s time expenditures on the tasks setting, their implementation control and also simplifies the docflow and invoicing process, giving to employee an opportunity to focus on the legal side of the work, passing the organizational issues to the system.

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