Don’t forget the day job: Is transformation holding your users back?

Don’t forget the day job: Is transformation holding your users back?

If you speak to any law firm IT department about what is on top of their to-do list right now, you can almost guarantee that it will involve a long list of projects around upgrading their document management system; moving their data to the cloud; achieving a Cyber Essentials certification; or any variant of the above.

There is no question that these big picture projects are essential to help firms modernise and take advantage of functionality that in many cases will only be available in the cloud. With one big caveat. In amidst the noise of digitisation and innovation, ensuring that users are able to undertake what should be the simplest of tasks is being forgotten.

A Tidal Wave of Change

Technology by its nature is always changing, and anyone who has worked in the legal sector for a long time will attest to the fact that ‘change’ per se, is not new. What is new, is that we are now facing fairly seismic change, with IT departments overrun with demands from the business to provide the latest generative AI solution, while having to undertake complex, and in many cases long overdue, infrastructure upgrades.

All of this is set against a backdrop of economic volatility – and in some cases budget cuts – as well as the lingering effects of Covid-19, particularly the need to facilitate long term hybrid working. Is it any wonder that IT teams attest to being completely overwhelmed by their day job?

The more important question, however, is whether the users – who, after all, this technology is there to benefit – can do their day job. And the answer is that they often can’t.

Too often, law firm users are battling with basic tasks, such as editing PDFs, redacting documents, or formatting documents in Microsoft Word. Ask your users how they are redacting documents, and it is quite likely that you will find there are people who are printing documents off, redacting them manually, and scanning them back in. This is a monumental waste of time which, played out across an organisation, represents hours of time that could be better spent. With fee-earners increasingly undertaking this work themselves, it also represents hours of unrecoverable time and lost billable hours.

Digital Strategies – Putting the User First

In McKinsey’s State of Organisations 2023 report, one of the 10 shifts that organisations are identified as grappling with is that they often announce technological or digital strategies without having the right capabilities to integrate them. For an organisation to perform better than their competitors, they need to identify work that is integral to their output and create an ‘institutional capability’ around it that includes people, process, and technology. McKinsey says:

“When well produced, such capabilities become a lasting edge, leading to consistent outperformance and growth in competitive advantage over time.”

For law firms, ensuring that users are able to deliver their work product quickly and effectively should be treated as an institutional capability, with the right resources, technology and workflow dedicated to it.

One example of this is that any cloud migration project needs to build in an assessment of how the user experience is impacted. While there are many advantages in moving to the cloud, often the cloud version of an application is quite different to the desktop. Users can find it slow and unfamiliar, and there may be favourite features that are no longer available. It is important to know who in an organisation is engaging with users on this, and what processes are in place to decide what users experience of the cloud should be.

Users’ needs have to come first in any cloud implementation strategy to ensure adoption and efficiency. Legal professionals aren’t ‘stupid’ if they don’t understand technology, it just means that the technology, and dare we say the organisation, has not done its job.

Conclusion

Change is only good when the reasons for doing it remain at the forefront of decision-making, and the end user doesn’t get left behind.

You can have all the cutting-edge technology you like, but if the people creating your work product don’t know how to use it in their day-to-day lives, then that represents an institutional failure. With a shift in focus, this can very easily be flipped on its head to become a competitive advantage.

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Kutana + Brochet align products to boost User Productivity in the Legal Sector

Kutana + Brochet align products to boost User Productivity in the Legal Sector

Kutana has acquired a major share of complementary business, Brochet, to build on the strengths of both companies and to offer even more value in support and features to clients.

Both Kutana and Brochet are established independent businesses working in the legal tech sector and founded more than 25 years ago. Between them, they share 40% of the top 200 UK law firms as clients.

The investment by Kutana will enable collaboration in software development around creating and managing documents in Microsoft Word with a focus on future integrations with client systems and client feature requests.

Nikki Pike, Founding Director at Brochet commented:

“We are very pleased to welcome Kutana as a major investor in Brochet. We share a common commitment to simplify user experience and we believe this will secure the long-term future of the business to the benefit of both clients and staff.”

Rob Simcock, Director at Kutana says:

“This is an exciting opportunity and the two businesses are a natural fit.  As an independent group, we will be able to provide more personal, extensive and customised document production support to law firms.”

“The past two years have clearly demonstrated that our clients need and want responsive technical support to help them adapt to changes in working environments.  Sharing the expertise and knowledge across our development teams means we can quickly deliver relevant products and features.”

Kutana Limited is a software development company that created Kappris which integrates with office and printer apps and becomes a part of a digital workflow. It’s intuitive to use and requires very little training.  https://kutana.co.uk

Brochet Limited is a company of software development and document production specialists that global brands and law firms trust to solve their Microsoft Word, PowerPoint documentation problems. They are also built one of the market-leading repair and restyling tools for legal numbered documents Brochet Paste. https://brochet.co.uk

For more information contact Rob Simcock:
rob.simcock@kutana.co.uk

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Electronic Signatures – The Law Commission’s Statement of Law

Electronic Signatures – The Law Commission’s Statement of Law

Execution with an electronic signature – what does it mean for your organisation?

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the in-person signing of deeds and documents impractical and created a nation of ‘remote’ workers.

Mercury-compliant ‘virtual signings’ (where the signature page of a hard copy document is signed in wet-ink and a PDF of the signed signature page is typically sent by email to the signatory’s lawyer following the guidance in the Law Society’s 2010 practice note on the execution of documents at a virtual signing or closing) are the preferred method for many businesses executing transaction documents.

However, the use of electronic signature platforms such as Adobe Sign and DocuSign can, in many circumstances, provide a viable, and arguably often more user-friendly, alternative and they are gaining increasing traction in the market.

This article sets out the full text of the Law Commission’s 2019 statement of law relating to the electronic execution of documents in England and Wales.

To help you evaluate the statement in the context of how you may wish to use electronic signature platforms within your organisation, the text has been annotated to provide guidance on the interpretation of the statement’s propositions and links to relevant legislation and case law.

This article is an edited, updated and extended version of an article originally written by Richard Oliphant (consultant, CMS) and published by Practical Law (Thomson Reuters) in March 2020. The statement of law is reproduced under Crown copyright and contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. 

 

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Much more than just print management software

Much more than just print management software

Most business processes were originally designed from moving paper from one place to another.

Nowadays, we still tend to print the paper that we need to move from one place to another…Kappris is here to help you print in a smart way– without paper – and often, without printers.

Smart workflow automation to digitise your office

Let’s face it, no business enjoys paying for administration and owners constantly strive to reduce the cost of business operations. Kappris Print Management software gives you smooth processes with just a click of a button, freeing up time and reducing the use and movement of paper.

Sending your letters with digital signatures, safe and securely

Quite rightly so, there’s a lot of fear about using digital signatures in the legal sector. After all, it’s a criminal offence if a solicitor’s letterhead is misused.

But fear won’t stop innovation happening. In fact, Kappris addresses all of the risks around using digital signatures, in particular, in the most frequent used scenario – sending out a letter.

Sending your letters with digital signatures, safe and securely

Quite rightly so, there’s a lot of fear about using digital signatures in the legal sector. After all, it’s a criminal offence if a solicitor’s letterhead is misused.

But fear won’t stop innovation happening. In fact, Kappris addresses all of the risks around using digital signatures, in particular, in the most frequent used scenario – sending out a letter.

Sending your letters with digital signatures, safe and securely

Quite rightly so, there’s a lot of fear about using digital signatures in the legal sector. After all, it’s a criminal offence if a solicitor’s letterhead is misused.

But fear won’t stop innovation happening. In fact, Kappris addresses all of the risks around using digital signatures, in particular, in the most frequent used scenario – sending out a letter.

Sending your letters with digital signatures, safe and securely

Quite rightly so, there’s a lot of fear about using digital signatures in the legal sector. After all, it’s a criminal offence if a solicitor’s letterhead is misused.

But fear won’t stop innovation happening. In fact, Kappris addresses all of the risks around using digital signatures, in particular, in the most frequent used scenario – sending out a letter.

Rubber stamp documents without paper or a rubber stamp!

Even in tomorrow’s digital world there’ll still be a need to have a ‘rubber stamp’. Our electronic rubber stamps and signatures are designed just for you and are used in many ways including;

 

  • Certifying digital document to be true and accurate copies.
  • Approving invoices to be paid.
  • Acknowledging receipt of documents on a specific date.
An approval process that works in any application

We have a client in Asia who needs funds to be released from their London office.

The Asia office sends a form to the accounts team in London, who must have approval before funds are released.

They print the form, run to a partner to get the signature and only then they can release funds. They then scan and save the signed form into their system for compliance.

If we receive information electronically in the first place, let’s keep it that way!

Does this scenario sound familiar? How often is a form printed in order to get a signature for it to then be scanned back?

Kappris users have:
  • Security and control of every digital signature, including persons authorised to sign on behalf of others.
  • An audit trail of who signed which letters, including persons who signed on behalf of others.
  • Seamless integration with Outlook to quickly send electronic letterhead by email.
  • Seamless integration with iManage/document management systems to store signed letters into the correct workspace with a meaningful andd easily identifiable file name.

iManage and DMS integration

Remove unfriendly file names from your DMS & make it easier to find your scanned documents.

You will no longer have to trawl through files with lengthy unique identifier names given to scanned documents. Kappris forces documents to be stored in your document management system into a client matter workspace with a meaningful file name.

iManage integration makes it easier to identify your documents from a ‘follow-me print queue’.

Intelligent print drivers know that a letter is to be printed on letterhead

Who or what tells the printer which paper to print on and whether it’s single or double sided?

Kappris recognises documents by their templates and sends instructions to printers so that the default setting for the document type is always used. Some document types can be forced to print double sided and in black and white and can achieve a huge cost saving.

Kappris smart printing saves money in wasted printing errors and saves time in messing about with printer settings. Kappris is a universal interface which means it works with any brand of MFD or printer so your experience is always the same even in a mixed fleet environment with lots of different printer types.

Kappris is a system that makes it easy for users to print the jobs they want without having to alter any of the printer settings.

Outlook integration thread

Do you want to print a 20 thread email conversation, or just the last 2?

The Kappris print button makes it easy to select parts of an email conversation, or the complete conversation, to print. It automatically recognises how many email exchanges have taken place, and the user can then select the number of these they wish to print.

Our clients’ favourite feature is to set a default to print only the last two emails in a thread, it saves masses of wasted paper.

In their 1st year of using Kappris, BLM Solicitors saved 1.5 million sheets of paper just by using the ‘Print Last 2 Emails Only’ feature in Outlook.

Email attachments

Printing attachments from emails is also made easier

No longer do you have to wait for applications to open, print, close, before moving onto your next task. And printing ZIP files is now more secure as no extraction to other folders is needed.

Effective and practical print management is key to any business. We can simplify your print processes, giving you control over the way your staff print. Influencing email printing, often a firm’s most significant print output, will reduce paper and toner use resulting in print savings and environmental benefits.

Kappris prevents harmful virus in macro enabled templates.

Reporting

Enjoy transparency of your business with Kappris reporting.

How do you know your investment is working for you?

How do you know if the changes you’ve made are working?

Kappris reports tell you who signed that letter using the digital signature. It will tell you how many emails have been printed using the ‘print only last 2 emails’ feature.

You can calculate your savings on paper usage, and you can demonstrate your compliance. You can be assured that you made the right investment in choosing Kappris.

Check out who and how many documents are being ‘printed’ to electronic stationery rather than paper.

Our simple to implement Kappris software allows your law firm to work in an extremely easy and flexible way, transforming your firm’s efficiency and creating a tailored digital working environment.

Kappris is a suite of simple software and templates that can transform the way your law firm works, whether that be digitally or with physical documents. It enables you to print securely from your work system to your home printer and it gives you one common view linking multiple hardware setups, wherever you are.

Book your Kappris demonstration or contact us today to understand how we can improve your performance and deliver genuine and significant reduction in costs.

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Saving emailed Zip files into iManage

Saving emailed Zip files into iManage

Have you ever needed to save the contents of an emailed Zip file into iManage?

We have now added a new feature in Kappris to allow users to save the contents of an emailed Zip file into iManage as a new document or new version.

Save Nested Attachments

There is a new button in the toolbar called “Save Nested Attachments”

Shows the dialog

If New Version is selected a ‘select document’ dialog is shown and then an ‘edit profile’ dialog, to allow the profile to be updated for the new version.  Users can continue selecting and filing until they hit close.

After New Document

Multiple emails and attachments can be selected and a standard iManage ‘save as’ dialog appears for each selected file if ‘New Document’ is selected.

After New Version
Then the edit profile

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The transformative power of technology

The transformative power of technology

 

Rob Simcock, commercial director of legal software firm Kutana looks at how technology is transforming our lives and working practices.

We’ve all seen how technology can transform what we do, and how we do it. From shopping, to listening to music, to monitoring our exercise regimes, tech has had, and continues to have, a transformational impact.

Some have claimed that the legal sector has yet to see the kind of disruption and innovation that others like banking and accountancy have. In their book ‘The future of the professions’ published this year, authors Richard and Daniel Susskind go so far as to claim that law firms’ working practices “have not changed much since the time of Charles Dickens”.

Now that’s an extreme view, but it does beg the questions: ‘how fit is your business for the 21st Century?’ and ‘are you empowering you workforce with the right tools?’

For any business an effective IT solution is an essential tool for productivity and cost efficiency. Many firms allocate large budgets to internal IT departments to ensure systems run smoothly, but are they getting bang for their buck?

Some new entrants to the legal market like Fairpoint Group – which in the last three years has acquired prominent consumer legal firms including Simpson Millar and Colemans – have driven the innovation agenda by bringing process to professional service.

It’s no coincidence that Fairpoint’s chief executive Chris Moat was at Direct Line when it started to shake-up the insurance sector, and much of what he’s done with Fairpoint’s legal services arm has been around offering a fixed cost service to customers underpinned by an highly efficient, paperless working environment supported by extensive use of IT and workflow management tools.

While Fairpoint has focused on the process of undertaking volume work in consumer law, such a tactic won’t necessarily be applicable to commercial firms dealing with bespoke or complex matters.

There has to be other ways of optimising efficiency.

One way could be to look at operational functions such as print.

Historically, legal firms have been huge users of paper – by their nature even some of the most basic contracts can be very word-heavy. Therefore having a good print management system in place is essential, particularly if you’re a firm handling large volumes of paperwork.

Printing is one of the most basic but overlooked processes for legal businesses. Without an effective management system in place it can be one of the most costly and inefficient processes.

Simple procedures like emailing a client a bill on the correct stationery can quickly become costly and time consuming if electronic stationery is not integrated into IT systems.

It means users have to send the bill to print, scan it back into the system and send it to the client in an email. This not only takes time, and can lead to other problems in the process, but it costs money.

Properly implemented the right print management software can save organisations significant time and money.

Law firm leaders should constantly have plans in place to make print management as cost effective as possible.

Due to time pressures sadly, some IT departments frequently overlook processes and developments that could make their firms more efficient. They fall into a mind-set that something is done a certain way, just because that is how it has always been done, and don’t look for a better solution.

Firms that allow such complacency to reign supreme risk being overtaken by forward thinking rivals who understand the importance of streamlining simple processes to make them more time efficient and cost effective.

At Kutana we are passionate about productivity and are on mission to understand ‘pain points’ for law firms. We’ve used our experience to develop cost saving software, called Kappris, that makes processes and print management as effective as possible. It’s one that has been adopted by firms such as DWF, Taylor Wessing and BLM, so if you want to find out more, please contact us or call 0330 202 0971.

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