A Small Law Firm Redefines What is Possible in Practice Management

By Peter Frankl and Michelle Stein-Evers for www.legalpracticeintelligence.com.au

There have always been two ways to run a legal practice, the old-fashioned way and the contemporary way but now, thanks to a small law firm in Sydney Australia, there is the Bransgrove way. The Bransgrove way defies categorisation. There are elements of the old-fashioned, elements of the contemporary and elements of the completely unique.

The word innovation comes to mind. You will find more innovation in this law firm than you will find in almost any other. However, the Bransgrove way is not about innovation for innovation's sake. It is about mastery. The question then becomes mastering what and for what purpose?

A Room with a View

Matthew Bransgrove started Bransgrove Lawyers in 2001 to be a niche litigation practice specialising in mortgage law. The two other partners in the firm are Kate Cooper and Alex Tees. The entire firm is made up of ten people, being six lawyers and four support staff.

Bransgroves Lawyers occupies an office suite in an A-grade commercial building in Sydney’s Central Business District. The smartly furnished, comfortable reception area gives no hint that this law firm might be different to any other city law firm.

That perception changes dramatically upon entering the main office area. The entire office is one large room. There are no partitions, no enclosed offices and no traditional desks. There are no shelves lined with law books. There are no client files to be seen anywhere, not even on the work tables.

Lawyers and other staff work at computers positioned on continuously-joined tables along the office walls. There is nothing obvious to identify who might be a partner, a lawyer or a support person.

Inside the main office area there is nothing obvious to identify that this is a law office. Six framed practising certificates hanging on a wall provide the only clear indication that this is in fact a law office.

The Phone Hardly Rings

The open-style office is part of the firm’s adoption of a principle called Radical Transparency.

Radical Transparency at Bransgroves Lawyers also means that there is no such thing as internal correspondence. For example, clients are copied on all emails. If an email is being sent to the other side, the firm’s client is not blind copied but openly copied. The opposing lawyer is encouraged to “reply-all”.

A lawyer in the firm emailed Mr Bransgrove asking whether a barrister should be briefed on a matter because she had no idea what law would be relevant to the facts of the case. That email was also sent to the client.

Telephone conversations are recorded in the form of emails which are then sent to clients. These emails serve multiple purposes including that of a file note and also a data entry source document for the firm’s evidence-based time recording system.

Bransgroves is a thriving law firm yet their phones hardly ever ring. This is due to the positive reason that clients are not chasing them to find out about the progress of their matters.

Clients are as up to date on their matters as the lawyers who are working for them. Clients receive, in electronic form, every piece of correspondence that their lawyer sees or produces, almost in real time.

The firm wins in terms of productivity gains because this approach minimises interruptions from clients who simply want an update on their matter. It also reduces the risk of professional indemnity claims of the type that might arise from a breakdown in communication between lawyer and client.




No Paper

The reason why no client files can be seen on shelves or on tables is because Bransgroves Lawyers operates a paperless office. The firm went paperless in 2005.

The ability to view many documents at the same time is achieved with multiple computer screens. Staff have either three or four monitors.

The firm uses scanners which have the ability to produce PDF output that is content searchable. They have found that scanning is becoming less important than it used to be because the vast majority of correspondence is now received in electronic form. External service providers are often used for heavy-duty scanning exercises.

Briefs are supplied to barristers in electronic form only. If you are a barrister and you want to be briefed by Bransgroves then you must be willing to accept briefs in electronic form. The firm visits barristers to train them on how to use electronic documents efficiently.

Bransgroves is serious about being paperless. Only a single drawer in the whole office has been allocated to hold temporary paper documents. The firm’s cleaners have been given strict instructions to throw out any paper that has been left on any table overnight.

Clients have been very supportive of the paperless approach. The client service agreement authorises the firm to hold client files in electronic-only form and each client receives a complete copy of their electronic file at the end of their matter. 

Dealing with subpoena requests could not be simpler. About two years ago the firm had to provide 110 files to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). The files were provided to ASIC on a small disk but this was not good enough for them. They wanted the “real thing” and when the firm explained there was no “real thing”, ASIC accepted it.

 

Software at Your Service

When Mr Bransgrove started the firm, the only software that he could afford was that which came bundled with the computer. This was Windows and Microsoft Office.  He used Microsoft Access to create a simple database that stored basic client and matter details. Documents were stored in Windows folders.

Almost ten years later, the firm still uses Microsoft Access and still stores documents in standard Windows folders. Over the last ten years however, the functionality of the matter management system has been continually enhanced and the backend database has been converted to SQL.

The firm uses external IT consultants to work on the practice management system. As the system became more sophisticated, the firm had to use more sophisticated IT consultants.

Bransgroves developed its own document precedents. They contain merge fields which work with the Access database providing automated document assembly.  

The matter management system has a one button link to the folder where a matter’s documents are stored. Strict discipline in folder and file naming conventions has meant that the standard search features in Windows are able to be used to quickly find documents. Along with Word documents, the Windows folders also store emails, PDFs and all the other files related to the matter.

Bransgroves chose not to develop its own trust accounting or billing software and uses a proprietary software product for these functions.

The firm has adopted a variant of cloud computing. It has created its own cloud. It uses a system called terminal services and houses the server on its own premises. The computer system can be accessed from anywhere in the world via an internet connection.

Desktop PCs have been completely “locked down”. It is not possible to save any document or file on the local hard drive of any computer.

Backups are important for every law firm but even more so when the firm is paperless and operates in a terminal services environment. Bransgroves has one of the most rigorous backup regimes possible.


Matthew Bransgrove at his desk

Mastery

Matthew Bransgrove and his team know how to harness the benefits of technology. Any new functionality to its systems will only be added if there is a real benefit.

In some areas of functionality, the firm’s systems are not as sophisticated as those available through the commercially developed practice management systems. On the other hand, it has not paid for functionality that it does not want or will never use.

The achievement of Matthew Bransgrove and his team cannot be explained only in terms of innovation and technology. If it was not for some old-fashioned approaches, most of the new technology implementations would have failed.

The essential old-fashioned elements have been staff training, documented systems and discipline. A culture of discipline pervades the firm, starting with the example provided by its managing partner, Matthew Bransgrove.

Bransgroves Lawyers has redefined what is possible in practice management.

Matthew Bransgrove provides proof to all of us who start our own practice or business, that it is possible to achieve what most of us set out to achieve: a business that is an extension of our self, our values and our creativity.

Link to Bransgroves Lawyers

How I found out about Bransgroves Lawyers
 
15 July 2010   

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