24 Sep 2008
Maurice Blackburn rolls out Elite 3E
Firm expects significant productivity uplift from Elite 3E’s automated matter management processes
LONDON - Maurice Blackburn, one of Australia’s leading plaintiff law firms, has gone live on Elite 3E, rolling out a version of the advanced practice and financial management system that has been specifically configured to meet its unique billing and reporting requirements. Elite, a Thomson Reuters business, is a worldwide provider of integrated practice and financial management systems for professional services firms.
An intense implementation and development program that began in January this year culminated in a go-live that chief financial officer Neil Mackay says was a smooth and successful transition. “We have hardly missed a beat in production. We now have a state-of-the-art technology platform with extensive workflow capacity and configurability, thanks to 3E’s integrated development offering,” says Mackay.
Acting in the interests of individuals, as well as undertaking class actions for shareholders and businesses, Maurice Blackburn also offers a broad range of litigation services to the corporate sector.
Mackay says Maurice Blackburn’s unique business profile means it needs a practice management system that offers a unique level of flexibility to accommodate its long work-in-progress lifecycles.
“The bulk of our work is characterized by lengthy work-in-progress cycles with multiple billing triggers towards the end of the matter,” says Mackay. “Critical to our business is the ability to quickly generate and distribute billing information based around an extensive set of billing rules, where manual processing creates cumbersome roadblocks.”
With fifteen national offices across several legal jurisdictions, the management of the firm’s business rules is even more challenging. Mackay says 3E’s extensive business process platform has provided a powerful foundation for building the firm’s complex business rules directly into the software.
Maurice Blackburn has enhanced the standard pro-forma process within 3E to develop a billing process which, from the initial generation of the invoice to sending the invoice out the door takes just ten clicks of a mouse.
“This level of efficiency is critical for ensuring the high numbers of transactions that are the foundation of our practice are processed in a timely manner, while keeping administration overheads low,” Mackay says.
Mackay says the system will also help improve Maurice Blackburn’s business development initiatives. “We will now have much better visibility of our prospective business and our conversion success rate. We can then analyse those conversion rates by referral source, which will help us manage our advertising spend more effectively.”
Mackay says he can see the firm continuing to implement further functionality within 3E over the next five years. “The return on investment is expected to be significant and we should start to see it within the next financial year. I believe the benefits we can reap from this product are enormous.”
Kim Massana, senior vice president, Strategic Marketing & International at Elite, says Maurice Blackburn’s implementation of Elite 3E provides an excellent example of how firms can benefit from implementing a new technology platform not constrained by legacy architecture.
“Elite 3E’s integrated development environment has allowed the firm to control the end user interface, meaning each user has a unique experience of the system relevant to the role they undertake,” says Massana. “This, together with a less time-consuming ability to process and generate bills, will radically improve efficiency and provide measurable return on investment into the future.”
About Elite
Elite is a leading provider of integrated information solutions to professional services firms worldwide. Elite is part of Thomson Reuters and is a premier provider of financial and practice management systems to the legal industry and to other professional services markets, including accounting, marketing services, and management and IT consulting. For more information, visit www.elite.com.
Media Contacts
Alison Sharp
Elite
Tel: +44 (0)20.7369.7360
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