Stories Earlier work, 2014
In safe hands
A law firm's client deposits attached to the case, with the rules the system knew by heart
A law firm held deposits for its clients: money or valuables in trust under a written agreement, to be released only on the depositor's instructions. The law requires a register, a separate account and a clean record of every release. The firm had the contracts on paper. I made tracking the deposit part of the case, so the lawyer working on a case saw its deposit, its status and the rules that applied to it in one place.
- What
- money held in trust for a client, under rules
- Tracked
- kind, amount, currency, official exchange rate, status, who may release
- After
- the deposit's details in one place, on its case
Before
An attorney's deposit is money or valuables a lawyer holds in trust for a client. Each one has a written agreement behind it. There are three kinds: money held until a condition is met, money to cover the costs of a case, and items held for safekeeping. The law is strict about what the lawyer must do. Keep a register. Keep the money apart from the firm's own. Release it only as instructed. Never use it.
The firm had the contracts, on paper, in files. The lawyer working on a case was usually not the person who had handled its deposit. So the details were spread out, and the lawyer had to collect them from several places: the paper file, the colleague who had handled the deposit, and whatever was written down elsewhere.
What was built
The deposit became a record attached to the case, tracked in the firm's case management system. Per deposit: its kind, the amount, the currency, the status, the conditions for release, and who was allowed to release it. For money in a foreign currency the system also tracked the official exchange rate of the central bank, which the rules refer to, so nobody had to look it up by hand when the time came.
That was the whole module. No reports, no workflow engine. A deposit you could see from the case, with its facts kept where the case was.
After
A lawyer opening a case saw the deposit and its details, without looking anything up elsewhere, and the register the law asks for existed as a side effect of attaching deposits to cases rather than as a separate chore.
The lesson
A record that has rules attached should be next to the work it's about.
When money is subject to rules, the system should know the rules and enforce them. The currency, the official exchange rate, who may release: the system looks them up, not a person. A person can slip on the fifth lookup. The system looks them up the same way every time.
More stories
More for your business
Case study 2020
When paychecks depend on Excel formulas
A regulated payment's path from a spreadsheet to a dedicated system, with an audit trail and five times the throughput
An HR department calculated a regulated payment in one spreadsheet. What replaced it, what it changed, and what I'd do differently today.
ReadEarlier work 2017
Check, please
Thousands of payment notices with pre-filled checks, so the back office stopped fixing payments
Thousands of payment notices went out with a blank check attached, and some payers filled it in wrong. What changed, what didn't, and the lesson.
ReadEarlier work 2017
Current affairs
Eight meters logged every ten seconds, and a weekly report that gives the final consumption per client without the Excel magic
A facility billed its users for electricity based on logs too large for anybody to effectively work with. What replaced the Excel afternoons, why trust came fast, and the lesson.
ReadRules on paper, records in folders?
Bring the rules you keep by hand and the records they need. You leave with a straight answer on whether it's worth fixing, which may be no.