Solicitors Own Software (SOS)has announced that SOS Connect integrated practice and case management software has rolled out to 450 users at Ashfords, a full service UK law firm and one of the largest practices operating in the south west of England.

Formed in 2004 when it demerged from Bevan Ashford, today the firm employs around 450 people including 270 legal specialists and 58 partners, figuring in the Top 100 list of law firms. Acknowledged as a regional heavyweight by Legal 500, Ashfords has gained a reputation for providing quality representation to local businesses at a lower cost than City firms.

Pursuit of excellence and innovation in everything they do is what motivates Ashfords. Mike West, head of information technology believes that the role of IT is to empower its solicitors to deliver highly, cost-effective services. The roll-out of SOS Connect to 450 users for document, case and practice management is contributing significantly to that goal. SOS Connect is also being used as an instrument of change for introducing uniform practices across the five offices; for flexing IT to meet the needs of different practice areas and delivering continuous improvement.

Since 2000 Ashfords has used SOS for accounting and back office functions integrated with another solution for case management. When a pilot document management project stalled in 2007, Ashfords went out to the market examining major solutions such as Interwoven and the new SOS Connect product.

Integration became the critical deciding factor.

“Some partners had seen a demonstration of Connect. They were impressed by the complete integration of document and case management and the accounts in a single product accessed through Outlook, with which they are so familiar,” recalls Mike West. “Looking at the wider picture, we saw that SOS Connect removed the integration headaches, best-suited our needs and would build on the SOS expertise that we already had.”

Since late 2007 each Ashford’s office – Exeter, Plymouth, Taunton, Bristol and Tiverton – was implemented  in turn with completion in April 2009. Functionality is being phased too. The first SOS Connect workflows have centralised file opening. Document management is also live. Emails are initiated within Connect rather than Outlook as this means that they are stored against the matter. It works two ways, too, as incoming e-mail, where subject headers remain the same, is also automatically filed back into the matter, which West describes as “particularly impressive”.

The in-house IT team is using Connect scripts to customise the system such as the integration of  DeltaView document comparison. “This illustrates how extensible Connect is and how we don’t always have to go back to SOS to make changes, which is another key benefit of the software,” comments West. More extensive developments are sourced from SOS.

The plan is to move the workflows from the incumbent case management system to SOS Connect, eventually. West says: “There’s a lot of potential in Connect to have everything under one system and reduce the amount of integration we need.”

As Ashfords becomes more experienced with Connect, new possibilities are opening up all the time, such as the closer integration with the Microsoft CRM system using XML.

The roll-out of SOS contributes to the drive for running a cost-effective business, as West states: “Already we are seeing intangible benefits. We believe SOS Connect is helping to make our lawyers better organised, more efficient and as a result, able to bill more time. Once the system has bedded in, and the benefits become more apparent, then we can start to take advantage of the excellent capabilities of both our IT team and the flexibility of Connect to deliver an even better fit to requirements, respond quickly to innovation in the business and maintain excellent customer service.”