Pi Law Direct
Unique barrister-led start-up firm implements Access Legal Practice Management Software
New start-up firm, PI Law Direct, is the first barrister-led personal injury law firm specialising in Personal Injury and Clinical Negligence. Based in London and Sheffield, the expanding firm ensures its clients receive high quality service, providing experienced and specialist barristers to manage each claim from inception right through to completion.
Andrew Smith, Head of Legal Services at PI Law Direct, explains why Access Legal's Practice Management System was first choice.
Why did you decide to implement a Practice Management System?
As a new start-up firm, we had ambitious plans for growth. In order to continue with our rapid development, we knew we needed a Practice Management System that would work from the outset and would enable us to scale up its usage as our staff numbers increased.
We also wanted to ensure working practices would be regulated across the firm and recognised – with the right solution – a lot of routine tasks could be carried out efficiently, whilst allowing us to provide a personalised service to clients.
Finally, we wanted an IT partner with proven experience in the PI sector who would enable us to streamline our business processes in a cost-effective manner, and provide long-term support.
Why did you choose Access Legal?
Personally, I have used a number of other systems in previous firms – some were good, some were less so – but the one that really stood out when researching the options was Access Legal. It’s something of an industry standard now, and has a reputation for reliability and effectiveness.
Importantly for us as a new start-up, Access Legal’s presence in the personal injury sector was impressive and the Access Legal system was widely recognised as the market leader, resulting in a wealth of experience and knowledge from the staff, which gave us confidence in our selection.
In addition to the core Case Management Software, Access Legal’s fully integrated Accounts solution offered us a complete Practice Management System – ideal for us as it centralised everything.
What day-to-day benefits do you see from Access Legal?
Access Legal is really the backbone to our practice – every member of staff utilises the system, which now provides us with a single desktop solution for handling claims. This essential feature really helps our barristers to maintain focus on the final goal – to win the highest damages possible for our clients.
Another key benefit to using Access Legal is the integrated accounting toolset which gives us complete control over our finances. We now have the option to manage appropriate access to certain financial information, as well as cater for a full range of posting types, resulting in a lot less work for our cashiers.
In addition, Access Legal’s ability to allow us to adapt to changing business or client demands is powerful. The inbuilt toolset enables us to construct or create changes as we see necessary and means we can constantly develop the system in line with our commercial and legislative goals.
Put simply, it works as it needs to! There are no dramas, no problems, no issues on the system not being designed correctly – it just works. As a busy law firm, Access Legal is exactly what we need – the ability to simply get on with the job and have a system that supports us.
How have Access Legal’s integration features enhanced your client service?
The A2A feature (which provides direct integration with the Government’s RTA and EL/PL portals) in particular makes life much easier. Having worked in firms that tried, unsuccessfully, to implement their own system, I’ve seen how wrong these things can go. There was no issue with Access Legal! The A2A worked perfectly from day one, and now ensures the process of submitting claims is much quicker, which in turn, enables our fee earners to take on a larger number of cases.
Do you have any future plans or goals for your use of Access Legal?
In the long-term, we plan to rapidly expand and we envisage Access Legal will be at the forefront of what we do for as long as we are managing claims.
In the short-term, we are considering implementing Access Legal’s Task Server – a program to automate regular tasks and carry out some of our labour-intensive administrative chores – for example, scheduling reports for automatic creation and distribution.
In addition, Access Legal offers a range of training – from introductory courses through to advanced and bespoke training days – which I anticipate taking full advantage of to ensure I develop a comprehensive knowledge of the entire system.
Overall, Access Legal guarantees we process cases with impeccable accuracy and speed, and enables us to be proactive in ensuring client expectations are exceeded. We are secure in the knowledge that Access Legal will grow and develop with us and we are excited at the prospect of a long and fruitful partnership.
