Duane Morris Implements iFramework for Litigation Support Project Management

Laura Bandrowsky, Practice Support Director at Duane Morris, writes about her firm's search for a project-management solution for their litigation-support department and why they selected iFramework.^[1] 

Like many firms, Duane Morris was using spreadsheets and a homegrown MS Access database to manage their litigation-support projects. Although these tools had served them well, as the firm began moving from traditional processes to electronic ones, their

Litigation Support Department made a necessary move away from using multiple systems, such as paper, e-mail inboxes and folders and/or Excel files, and began implementing centralized, online, real-time technologies that include integration with processing tools and online review platforms that can be accessed from one centralized project management system.

Although the IT department had developed a very sophisticated Access database to manage the firm's products, which had worked well for a number of years, we appreciated the value of moving to the iFramework project management tool because of the more comprehensive utilities it provides.^[2]

Ms Bandrowsky details Duane Morris's selection process and describes the features of iFramework that won the firm over, including:

• that it was tailored specifically for litigation support;
• its SaaS model made it more affordable and easily deployed than locally installed software;
• the ability to customize templates to the firm's best practices;
• its dashboard views providing instant visibility into projects;
• integration with Trident Pro (an e-discovery tool that processes native files);[3]
• custom reporting; and
• wiki-enabled collaboration.

Duane Morris is obviously happy with their selection of i-Framework, having written this high-profile article extolling the product. In addition to i-Framework helping to increase the adoption of standardized, repeatable processes in their litigation-support department, and to improve collaboration among project stakeholders, I also noted with interest that Ms Bandrowsky highlights the benefits the tool has brought to the firm's human resources:

Current economic conditions have increased the pressure for the Litigation Support Department. We had to establish priorities on improving efficiency, controlling costs, profitability, effective use of resources, and essentially, doing more with less. As resource constraints have impacted our department, implementing an automated and centralized framework to manage projects has become a necessity.^[4]

Having recently written about the importance of project management to attorney job satisfaction,^[5] I would be interested to know if implementing iFramework, in additional to helping the firm "do more with less," also improved the allocation of work so that attorneys and staff were working on tasks best suited for their roles and capabilities.  It is unclear from the article how much the system is used by attorneys as opposed to legal-support staff, but I would assume that better matching of staff to assignments would help boost morale in the litigation support department. 

Also, I'd like to know whether the implementation of an SaaS project management solution, with Web 2.0 collaboration features, led to more hours of, and greater acceptance of, working remotely. I would hope that implementation of a tool like iFramework can be used not only to squeeze more out of fewer resources, but also improve the working environment for the firm's attorneys and legal support staff.

This is the only article I know of where a law firm has shared their experiences in selecting and implementing a legal project management tool. Any litigation-support department looking to evolve from MS Excel and MS Access to a more comprehensive, collaborative, and mobile solution, should reference Ms Bandrowsky's article.