Ann Danley has been a practicing attorney for 20 years. Early in her career she worked in a large law firm eventually becoming a partner. Frustrated by the constraints of a large firm and desiring to take more control over her practice and client relationships, she opened her own practice ten years ago. Managing a sole practice was a challenge in the early days where she juggled clients, accounting, staff, and the office. Business tools to help her manage the operations of a small office are expensive, cumbersome, and not tailored to the needs of a small office and sole practitioner. At any one time, Ann has several on-going client actions. This requires her to keep track of the status of a given case, items due, schedule of events, contact information, and billing. Since many legal matters follow statutory and judicial time lines, the Bar Association requires that an attorney have more than one calendaring system, and backup capabilities for case material. When laptops became reasonable to carry about, she brought her laptop to off-site meetings, the law library, and on vacation to keep track of on-going matters. |
However, after several years of this Ann has grown tired of lugging around the laptop, and, struggling with PC and software upgrades, complex software applications, system crashes, and lost electronic files. She wants to simplify managing her practice and case activities, but retain control of crucial business information. She wants her personal and business information readily available where ever she is, and on what web-enabled ever device she has access to.
Prior to leaving for her office, Ann receives a cell phone call from a client who requests meeting that day. Ann uses her PC in her home to access Ceboa and check her calendar for the day. She finds an open slot and schedules the client meeting by noting an action in the clients account.
After Ann gets to office she checks her e-mail and opens the e-mail automatically sent by Ceboa containing her schedule for day and week, plus her do lists which she has created for each open client case. Ann uses Ceboa to download her standard fee agreement template and creates an agreement for the new client that she scheduled to meet that day.
After meeting with a client for an on-going matter, Ann uses the Ceboa client account facility to store notes on the meeting. Since she had previously created an open invoice using Ceboa, for later billing of the client, Ann adds the billable Attorney Service expense for the meeting to the open invoice. Later that morning, Ann meets with the new client that had called her earlier in the day. Ann uses Ceboa to check her conflicts list to ensure that she has no past legal matters that will conflict with the new client. As part of the initial discussion, the client asks for summary information sheet on aspects of their type of case. Ann points the client to her Ann's business web site which contains information about such matters. Ann has built up a variety of information material using Ceboa's Article Manager to augment her web site. Early in the afternoon Ann travels to the local court house to file an action in a legal matter. She pays the filing fee and presents the required number of copies to be filed and stamped by the court. Later she returns to her office and notes the court filing action in the client's account using Ceboa and notes the next action to be performed for the case. In addition, Ann adds the additional billable items to the clients open invoice, including the legal service, mileage, copy expense, and court filing fee. |
A fellow attorney calls Ann and tells her he has referred a client to her and goes over the clients case. After the phone call, Ann create a new client account using Ceboa and marks it as a lead to initiate the potential client information. Ann contacts the potential client and schedules an appointment. She notes the client action in the and schedules the meeting using Ceboa. Ann creates a fee agreement and e-mails that agreement to the client, noting the actions in the clients account record. At the end of the day Ann uses Ceboa to review her activities scheduled for the next day. She also checks any actions that were previously scheduled but not completed. Ann sends several invoices to clients and notes them in Ceboa as billed. Checking the regular mail, Ann has received payment on some outstanding invoices. Ann notes the invoices as paid, using Ceboa. Because the next day is the start of a new month, Ann uses Ceboa to create an accounts payable record for the new month. She creates this using a template of common recurring expenses, such as rent and utilities so that she doesn't have to create these accounts payable expenses each month. She only has to adjust the actual expense cost for expenses that recur but differ in price, such as the electric utility service. This accounts payable is used not only to better manager her non-billable business expenses but also to simplify her tax preparation for her tax accountant. |