Case openings take too long, causing problems for clients and staff. This includes being a major factor in missed conflicts. This month, we are rolling out tools designed to speed things up. They work to limit duplicate data entry and automate repetitive tasks. That might not seem like much, but in our pilot program, the changes below more than halved case opening times.
Of course, the improvements you see will vary depending on your office’s current workflow, but the bottom line is this, it takes less time to enter information one time than it does multiple times, and it takes less time to open one document than many. This post will focus on work being done in the PD division, but if other divisions find value in the work, it can easily be expanded to address their needs as well. That being said, this piece is divided into four parts:
- The Problem: Case openings take too long.
- A Partial Solution: Limit duplicate data entry. Automate what we can.
- What will change?
- Why these changes?
The changes discussed here will be rolling out over the course of October. If you have questions or comments, please direct them to David Colarusso or use the comments section below.
The Problem: Case openings take too long.
If it takes an hour to open a case and you only have one person opening cases, anything more than seven cases a day creates a backlog, and in my experience, seven cases is a light duty day. Of course, the details differ from office to office, but the truth is this, case opening is often a bottleneck. I’ve visited offices where the backlog has resulted in a lag of weeks between assignment and opening. This causes problems for everyone. Among the most visible of these is the missed conflict. Since most conflict checks are done at opening, a delayed opening can mean a delay in catching conflicts, a delay that results in a needless waste of defendants’ time as they wait (often in custody) for new counsel. Suffice it to say, the quicker the turnaround on a case opening, the better it is for defendants. In most offices, the workflow for opening a case goes something like this:
- An attorney is assigned a case and given a collection of documents (e.g. the complaint, police reports, CORIs, etc.).
- The attorney combines these documents with her own (e.g. an opening sheet, release form, etc.) and passes the bundle to a member of the administrative staff to open the case. In some offices, cases are screened by the AIC or supervising attorney and assigned before this step or between subsequent steps, but you get the idea.
- The person opening the case enters general case info into CASEY (e.g, charges, client info, participant info, etc.), while running a conflict check for each new party.
- The person opening the case then creates a constellation of new documents (e.g., running sheets, CORI requests, opening letters and the like). Often there are templates for these documents, but many of them require duplicate data entry. That is, the person opening the case must type and retype things like the docket number and the client’s name. This is mostly information they just entered into CASEY.
- A folder or folders are created for the case and the above documents are saved to the shared drive.
- Some of the documents are printed out, finding their way into the case file or mail.
- The CORI request is attached to an email and sent to [email protected].
- The folder is placed in an attorney’s mailbox, and presto, the case is Open.
Now think about steps four through seven. Think about all the time it takes to open a bunch of Word files, the time it takes to type the same things over and over again, the time it takes to save them, to print them out… Individually, each of these isn’t much but cumulatively, they might make up more than half the time it takes to open a case. Wait, how do I know that? I know because in testing when we streamlined these tasks the time it took to open cases was more than cut in half. Which brings us to…
A Partial Solution: Limit duplicate data entry. Automate what we can.
If you’re familiar with Word, you probably know a little about the mail merge feature and macros. A mail merge allows one to populate a document with data from some other location, often a spreadsheet. This can be a powerful tool for customizing documents. Macros allow you to automate simple tasks, combining many actions into one. Used together, macros and mail merges can automate the creation of custom documents. So in order to shave time off case openings, we’re releasing a set of macros and mail merge options to auto populate opening documents with data from CASEY. Consequently, when a case is opened it will no longer be necessary to type and retype a client’s name or the docket number. No longer will staff have to open and save dozens of documents. Rather, the new workflow will look like this:
- An attorney is assigned a case and given a collection of documents (e.g. the complaint, police reports, CORIs, etc.).
- The attorney combines these documents with her own (e.g. an opening sheet, release form, etc.) and passes the bundle to a member of the administrative staff to open the case. In some offices, cases are screened by the AIC or supervising attorney and assigned before this step or between subsequent steps, but you get the idea.
- The person opening the case enters general case info into CASEY (e.g, charges, client info, participant info, etc.), while running a conflict check for each new party.
- The person opening the case opens a single Word document, chooses the case to open from a menu and hits “ctr+2.” This pre-populates a single Word document, which is actually a collection of documents, with data from CASEY. The user reviews and edits this output as needed. They hit “ctr+3,” and based on their replies to a few questions, the template is automatically split into individual documents are saved to predefined folders on the shared drive. Additionally, if the user wants to, the CORI request can be automatically emailed, and documents automatically printed out.
- The documents are placed in a physical folder and given to the attorney, and the case is officially Open.
What will change?
After we finish the case opening roll out, attorneys will be able to access CASEY for mail merges on their own Word documents. I’ll be writing a post on this later, but for now, just imagine auto populating your own template trial motions with docket numbers et al. You can even auto fill pronouns.
The macros require us to provide a common template of opening documents. So it’s possible that you’ll notice a change to the layout of some common documents. I say “possible,” because every office has a limited ability to customize the common template. That is, you’re office can customize basic formatting and content, things like letter head, motion formatting, and the content of your opening letters. That being said, the common template was created with input from each of the offices. Earlier in the year, they were asked to provide examples of their common documents, and these were considered before the final template was approved by management. It’s important to note that IT will only be supporting the common template. So if an office opts to customize something and it breaks, all IT can do is restore the default template. That being said, AAs have been trained on how to edit templates, and we will be working closely with them this month to help get templates to a point they are happy with.
Below you’ll find a list of the documents included in the common template. Please keep in mind that there is no mandate for your office to use all of these documents. If you have no need in your practice for a notice of counsel or don’t want to use a pre-filled PTC form (or your court doesn’t use the form provided), no worries. The point is that if you want to use them, they’re ready and waiting.
- Running sheet
- CORI request
- New CL Letter (custody) (English)
- New CL Letter (custody) (Spanish)
- New CL Letter (non-custody) (English)
- New CL Letter (non-custody) (Spanish)
- Appearance of Counsel (Motion-like format)
- Appearance of Counsel (District court form)
- Close Out Sheet
- PTCR (district)
- HIPAA
- Immigration Intake
- SSA Referral
- Investigation Referral
- Generic Motion
- Generic Client Letter
The macros also require the folders on the network drive to have the same layout across offices. So you can expect to see a new folder on your shared drive. It will be called “AAA [office name] Cases.” Within this folder you’ll find a folder for each of your office’s clients, and inside these you’ll find folders for each of their cases. Open cases will be in the AAA folder and closed cases will be in the “01 Archive” folder. We know that some of you like to keep client folders inside your own folder on the shared drive (e.g., dcolarusso/open cases/doe, john), and it’s important to note that the new process does not preclude you from keeping up this practice. Client folders existing outside of this main AAA folder should, however, be shortcuts to, not copies of, the original file. The AAs have been trained on how to create these shortcuts.
Why these changes?
In talking to AA’s, it became clear case opening was a large pain point, and it was clear it was clearly affecting our representation. It was also clear that we could do a better job with our existing tools, namely MS Word. So the decision was made to do something with what we have. Of course, when I say, “the macros require” above it would be more precise to say, “if we are to avoid writing custom macros for each of the offices, the macros require.” So as with most things, the solution was confined by resources. That being said, the question was this, “can we make this hard thing easier?” The answer was yes, and even if it’s not perfect, it’s better than before. Yes, there will be some changes to workflow, but in the end, that’s all they are–changes to how we work, not additional work, because at the end of the day these make for less work and improve our practice.
The benefits to standardizing how we store information extend beyond case openings. For example, the common case folder makes it easy for office staff to find a client’s info when they call and don’t remember their attorney’s name. It will makes it easier to find archived case files as we move these onto the network. If the drug lab scandals have taught us anything, it is that our agency needs to do a better job of knowing what it knows, and a large part of this is organization. This is a step in that direction, and we look forward to improving upon it in the future.