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Reporting

Further fields can be added and removed to aged debt report export via the 'Export Fields Setup', These can be set as system wide defaults and you can customise and save your own lists for future selection. More information can be found here Aged Debt Export Fields Function

The case analysis report can be used to find all cases that have no default legal aid certificate, court reference (indictment) number or BMIF area of practice

The fee analysis report can be used to find all instances of a fee code or multiple codes within a certain date range. For example you may have a bespoke comment code that defaults text to signify you have chased, you could add this code and find all instances where you've chased solicitors

There are stats tabs available within barrister and company records that show various financial and practice analysis in table and graphical formats

Action Notes can be used on cases (via the Fees tab) that can then be made visible on aged debt reports. This can be useful for adding notes for reference to fee chasing circumstances so it’s visible direct from aged debt without having to go in to the case. More information can be found here Action Notes

Diary

You can change the diary colour for all standard appointment types and the colour chip for any appointment type to help differentiate between different appointments in the diary

You can have multiple tabs within the diary as well as the ‘Main’ tab. This could be used to have diary tabs for different teams, different appointment types (conferences only for those who need to allocate conference rooms for example), just Warned Dates etc. See walkthrough here.
Send emails from the diary using email templates to confirm bookings or update barristers /contact with appointment info. Using email templates saves time in populating the data; Right click on the appointment and navigate to Email - Template. Different templates can be available for each scenario, more information about email templates click here

Location View can be enabled on the diary to allow barristers to see where other barristers are geographically without showing case information

You can tick a selection of barristers in the diary and when you then click the GREEN + icon next to one of the selected barristers it will create a new appointment for that date with all selected barristers automatically added.

If using opportunities, selecting the barristers then selecting the BLUE + icon will add those members to a new opportunity

Case & Fees

Default email templates can be independently set for fee notes, drafts, invoices, receipts, credit notes and statements. More information about email templates can be found HERE

When emailing from a case, a system default can be set to open up the email template screen rather than navigating from print options each time to send an email, merging this with the advice above by setting some default templates and emailing becomes much quicker and smoother

You can change the workflow template on a contractual terms case? You can assign additional workflow templates to contracts (via Search > Contracts) and can then change the workflow template on cases using the relevant contract

You can quickly access document associated to fee lines, such as fee notes, payment receipts etc by right clicking on any fee line that has the paperclip icon to the left and selecting 'View Read-only Copy' from the pop up

You can use high priority forum notes on cases and companies that will pop up every time you go in to that case or, if used on a company, any case for that company. They will also pop up every time you create a new case and/or appointment so can be used for important reminders about that case or company
Guidance on using these can be found here Forum Notes - Case Level or Forum Notes - Contact and Company

Brighten up the Fees tab by assigning colours to specific fee codes, these are system wide and not per user. Available colours are Yellow, Red, Green, Blue and Purple

Do you need to have a third party billing address on a certain case? Go to the Contact Info tab and click the ‘Correspondence’ header on the right hand side and you can then fill in the required name and address as appropriate. This then becomes the default billing address for that single case without having to change anything on the company record

Any documents you add to ‘Document Root’ folder within the Documents tab of a case can be accessed by all barristers on a case, whereas anything within their own sub-folders can only be accessed by them. Learn more Docs Tab

You can check if emails have been sent on a particular case by going to Activities tab in that case and then Filters > Status > Complete. This shows all emails and if the status is complete you know it has successfully sent but if the status is error you will need to contact support so we can check the log files and determine why it may have failed to send

Whilst on the Fees screen of a case you can go to Options > Filter Options to show/hide any type of entry. For example, you could hide internal and external comments when concentrating on fees for larger cases. You can toggle deleted entries from here as well. Click here to learn more Filter the Fees Tab

Search

You can use the minus symbol to exclude certain text from search fields, for examples you could put –CFA in the ‘Funding’ field of the case search to exclude all CFA cases. More tips here Search Grid - Config and Tips
When performing a full case search via Start > Search > Cases, you can also select the ‘Transactional’ tab to search using more financial based fields. You can then use the < and > characters to search for everything less than or greater than certain values

Case Transactional search provides an array of further case information, such as workflow template, action notes, as well as all fee, adjustment and payment values

You can see all record within any search grid created after a certain date; enter, for example, >01/01/2024 in the Created search header to see all records created after 1st Jan 2024. This can be applied to any search grid.
The same applies for adding a date range to search grids to only see records created between date A and date B, for example use 01/01/2024, 11/12/2024

Miscellaneous

Handled Events - Chambers can set up handled events that can chase barristers and/or clerks for outstanding paperwork as often as required a certain number of days before paperwork is due and also, if required, after paperwork is due as well. Particularly useful if barristers aren't always reliable at producing paperwork on time

Varied Document Use - You can have multiple versions for the same document that can be based on case type, funding type or barrister; for example you could have different fee notes for each team of work, civil, family, criminal etc, all with different text and contact details

File Name Structure - Chambers can change the structure of document filenames. Rather than calling saved documents [document name]-[time stamp], for example Invoice_1_1_2024_10_05_59_229.doc could be changed to [document name]-[time stamp]-[invoice number] so it would become Invoice_1_1_2024_10_05_59_229_INVGJC21.doc. It may just be handy to know that those random numbers are in fact the date and time so the 1_1_2024_10_05_59 part means the document was generated on 1st Jan 2024 at 10:05:59am

Security Options - The security options within each profile can be amended to show / hide certain fields either based on user type requirements or to tidy up the screen. Boxes not used can be hidden in the background which makes the visuals more pleasing to the eye.

The below gives an example of a case record for a very simple setup:

Many chambers marketing teams would benefit from the clerks having a simpler approach to contact entry removing the unused boxes and leaving key contact and marketing fields on show without scrolling or looking out for the right boxes means a better chance of getting the correct data for that contact added.

To find out more about any features mentioned here, contact your account manager via LEXAccountsTeam@opus2.com