Dermot G. O’Donovan Solicitors

Here’s how our Keyhouse Practice Management solution helped Dermot G. O’Donovan Solicitors save 50% of their time spent on routine day-to-day work…

Background

Dermot G. O’Donovan Solicitors is one of the oldest law firms in the Mid-West, offering a wide range of services encompassing all aspects of private individual, corporate and business law. It is a modern progressive law firm with a team of approximately 20, all of whom are committed to delivering excellence through a comprehensive service.

In 2018, after researching the market extensively for a new case management system provider, Dermot G. O’Donovan Solicitors chose Keyhouse.

Challenge

The firm had been using a UK based Case Management system (when first purchased the company was based in Ireland but was then acquired by a UK company). They had never used the system to its full potential or implemented the workflow. The partners knew this was needed to streamline their work practices and drive efficiencies for the firm.

Using workflows with automated document generation was key to the firm increasing productivity and enabling more uniformity in the way people worked in relation to file management. It was also important for upholding the firm’s elite Q9000 Quality Standard.

One of the biggest challenges the firm faced was getting the team’s buy-in to the new system and new ways of doing things — old habits such as cutting and pasting had to be broken.

Solution

Breaking away from old habits was greatly helped by the intuitive interface and familiar Microsoft Office look and feel of the Keyhouse system. The firm was also acutely aware that investing in a new system involved change not only in technology but also in work practices. Most importantly, it required a shift in mindset amongst the people in the team for a successful implementation.

Margaret Irwin headed up the project with the firm’s principal, Muiris Gavin, who told us that their previous system was never used properly and that people had fallen into the habit of using it badly (which in our experience is not uncommon with any system).

To make sure everyone got off on a good footing right from the get-go we initiated comprehensive role-based training with a trainer on site for the first few days following the go live date, with on-going and readily accessible telephone support when needed.

What might appear as a technical challenge and was naturally a major concern for the firm was how we were going to migrate 20 years of client data from previous systems to the new Keyhouse Case Management System. With our team having over 30 years’ experience in migrating data from practically every mainstream system on the market, it was easily done in the end.

Result

• Margaret says the firm chose Keyhouse “for the product and the people. From early on, the very first demonstration in fact, it was very clear from the outset how closely Keyhouse worked with clients and what the actual system offered functionality wise. Importantly for us, the team behind Keyhouse also had a good understanding of the legal market and our challenges as a law firm. It also helped that we already had their accounts module and [our accountant] had always been very happy with the support she received when needed — so we knew that back up was there.”
• The biggest benefit, according to Margaret, “has to be productivity: the embedded document generation saves a huge amount of time and effort when generating documents. It does, of course, take time to get the documents coded so the fields will auto populate but once you put this time in at the beginning it’s done forever! Keyhouse helped me to reduce the time I spend on closing documents, contracts and other document generation heavy work by up to 50%.”
• Defined processes and workflow ensure a uniformity of approach to work whilst improving efficiencies and mitigating against risk. An additional bonus is that the support team is more satisfied with their work and productivity has increased. With workflows, they no longer have to search for precedent documents and / or cut and paste, as all documents now generate automatically.
• “We are using workflows in almost all areas of the firm, with the team finding the reminders particularly helpful and work taking half the time since workflows have been installed.”
• “Integration with Microsoft Office (especially Outlook) was very appealing given the volume of emails the firm has to manage. It’s great that you just have to click on the Assign to Case button in Outlook and it’s done — saved to your file so quickly and easily.”
• “Transitioning from a new system is daunting at the beginning, but you always have great support with Keyhouse every step of the way.”