“Designed to play a key organisational function, a Chambers Management System has two essential constituent parts. It is both a multi-barrister legal diary and a billing solution enabling the financial management of cases. While in practical terms a Chambers Management System will mean different things to different people, depending on the specific emphasis of the work in question, these two elements are pivotal to the solution.

“Looking back at the implementation of IT in chambers, the profession’s utilisation of technology has, to a large extent, mirrored the wider business picture.

“Most small to medium sized enterprises adopted computers in the late 80’s as stand-alone technology devices purchased to run a specific line-of-business application. And, once the technology ball was rolling, a paperless office soon became the vision for most organisations and the ‘PC per desk’ and corporate network evolved that we all take for granted today.

“Where previously people’s daily work tended to be taken to the IT mountain for digestion and analysis, it now came to every user’s desktop and this development opened up a world of direct access computing for all.

“With the spread of desktop PC’s came a ubiquity of software applications and office computing soon developed beyond its original specialised functionality to process and communicate our words and calculate our sums.

“As such, in today’s contemporary business environment, it is now perhaps easier to list the activities not performed with your PC than those that are.

“With this explosion of software applications, a fair assumption would be to find a generic business application for chambers. However, while chambers have certain parallels with other industries, it soon becomes clear that this unique business model demands a specialist software solution.

“The established and sophisticated nature of chambers presents a challenging scenario for software solutions providers. The self-employed status of barristers, combined with the facilitation and management role of clerks, sets the environment apart. Individual barrister accountability is required within a highly structured setting and anyone addressing the needs of the profession can see that the industry works in a distinct manner. It has therefore been recognised by system users and solution providers alike that off-the-shelf, generic finance packages do not provide the flexibility required to be configured to meet the precise needs of this highly individual and specialised application.

“As computer systems continue to evolve, our sights are generally set a little higher than yesterday’s baseline and we should consider ‘convergence’. Initially, we had isolated pools of data and processing, and then we had mass computing with many computers running many applications enabling interactive IT communication.

“Our new horizon is what Bill Gates termed the ‘digital nervous system’ where each piece of software is a smaller piece of the bigger IT jigsaw. As such, we see discrete elements of the computing solution working alongside other elements to provide flexibility, scalability and resilience. The communication model becomes finer as each software application starts to become aware of its function and communicates directly with its peers.

“If this sounds a little too ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and you find this hard to apply to the chambers environment then consider the Internet. Can you define it? Is it one application? Where is it and who owns it? The Internet is in fact a convergent application; albeit a massive one that exists through the definition of open technology standards and today’s Chambers Management System needs to sit within this wider context.

Practical open standards:

“Open standards are a hugely important development in IT that have evolved to benefit the wider business community and are perhaps the first signs of the software industry reaching maturity.

“Ignoring the purist notion that an open standard must be community owed and committee led, practical open standards are those standard technologies that are well enough defined and supported to allow the inter-operation of many software applications. And the real sea-change behind open standards gaining priority is the establishment of ownership of data by users, rather than software vendors.

“Like any other effective business IT solution, Chambers Management Systems should be built using these open standard technology components and anyone adopting a chambers solution should establish that it runs on these technologies to confer the benefits of well-proven and reliable components.

“Open standards based solutions avoid the proprietary pitfalls of the software industry’s ‘Wild West’ and provide a solid framework for future-proofing your business and safe-guarding your investment.

Chambers Management System specifics:

“Having painted the broader picture against which Chambers Management Systems should sit, we turn to address a number of specific features to be taken into consideration when upgrading, renewing or replacing your chambers software:

Resilience – do standard components underpin the system to deliver a reliable and robust foundation for your application? Will these components continue to evolve to meet whatever technical challenges and opportunities lie ahead?

Flexibility – can your system be configured to meet your current business needs, and will it provide enough flexibility of configuration and inter-operation with other systems to keep up with your business?

Scalability – can your system cope with change as your business and the wider business community changes? In the event of a merger, could your solution cope with ten times the volume of business split across a number of different locations?

Cost of ownership – a big factor in any application is the real cost of ownership to keep it running. How long does it take to get a new user up and running? Will you be able to upgrade your server without complication?

Remote access – office based working is just one element of today’s busy chambers. Increasingly the necessity of working from outside chambers, and the recognised advantages of home-working, mean that secure yet simple access, and ease-of-use from every environment, is essential. When someone wants to work remotely, will they be able to use the solution in exactly the same way as they would in chambers.

Support – will you get the support you need when you need it? How large is the support team, is there a dedicated query hot line and how flexible is the supplier regarding site visits?

Functionality – does the diary provide a simple, intuitive interface that gives key chambers personnel the information they need both quickly and efficiently? How easy is it to drill-down, or drill-through, to related information? Does the system meet the distinct demands of your clerks, barristers and practice manager?

“Concluding this report for readers of The Barrister, those implementing Chambers Management System solutions should not be overwhelmed by the considerations that have been advised. Having understood the benefits of integrated IT solutions, most supplier questions should be covered when entering a partnership relationship and more detailed technical answers will be forthcoming from any professional service provider.

“Most importantly, anyone considering a Chambers Management System should ask whether the solution meets their precise needs: remember open standards and avoid a technology-based compromise.”

David Randall
Telephone 0116 225 2000
Facsimile 0116 225 2001
Email david@formsoft.com