Welcome to LT Online Corporation's Departmental Blog.
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- Quickly Identify Matters That Are Missing Certain Key Information (9/17/07)
There are reports in available in the Morning Report area to list records in need of updating.
Site Administrators who have access to site settings can activate one or more of these one–click reports to display on the Morning Report page.
It is a quick way to check if users are populating key fields that are used in reporting.
One report, for example, lists records that are missing the primary Division – a setting which also interfaces with financial records for accounts payable, general ledger, and other managerial reporting and decision processes.
Another report lists records that are missing the primary person responsible for the record.
Before running management reports, it is a good idea to review the various "missing information" Morning Reports to identify matters that might not appear on the reports because of these missing fields.
The "Query By Type" report in the Matters directory of the Reports module is a versatile report. It has several criteria settings, including date range, type of matter, and primary person assigned.
The report can display the legal and business hierarchies even if those fields are not populated.
You can generate a report for a selected individual, who can then review and indicate what updates are needed.
– Julie Reed
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- Deleting a Matter (9/6/07)
The following is the protocol for deleting entire matters in Lawtrac:
- Select Administration
- Select Matter Maintenance
- Select Delete Matter
- Enter the matter number in the "Matter Number To Delete" field
- When the prompt appears to permanently delete the record, click "Yes"
- When the "Please Confirm that this is the correct matter" screen appears, click "Delete Now"
Most importantly, be careful when deleting a matter.
– Jenell Vanel
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- Retrieving matters using the Quick Find search box (8/28/07)
There are a number of selections in Quick Find Setup to facilitate quick and effective retrieval of matters using Quick Find.
Under the "My LAWTRAC" link there is a section for the Quick Find module. Please ensure that your Quick Find settings are set as follows:
- "Only Include My Assignments" – The Quick Find will restrict results to only matters where the user is assigned.
- "Jump To Record if Only One Found" – The application will jump directly to the matter review screen if only one matching matter record is found.
- "Restrict List To Record Count" (updated recently so this setting also applies to the My Matters listing) – This will help increase the speed in which the page is drawn. The recommended setting is between 100 and 200. The maximum setting is 1000 records.
- "When Searching Focus On" – Limiting your search to certain fields will decrease search time substantially.
– Jenell Vanel
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- Relationship Between OutisdeCounselNo and Vendor ID (8/20/07)
What is the relationship, if any, between OutsideCounselNo and VendorID? If all vendors are set up as outside counsel, which should be used?
Use the Vendor ID. The VendorID equals the TableID of the Vendors Table. This is faster and is truly more relational, and also allows the OutsideCounselNo field to be edited without changing the data relationship.
The OutsideCounselNo field is simply used to house the TimeKeeperID requirements to the LEDES standard.
– Jim Harris
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- Reviewing Invoices and the Morning Report (8/16/07)
Three items an Administrator is likely to needs to know every day are:
- invoices that do not have a review/approval chain
- invoices received but have not been reviewed by the first individual in the approval chain
- invoices received but not yet approved by your staff
All three can be easily added to your Morning Report. The Site Administrator simply must select them to appear in the Reports link under Morning Report.
Location: Administration | Program | Morning Report
By setting it up this way, these items can easily be reviewed each morning and items can be addressed as necessary.
– Robin Harris
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- Total Amount Field: Let the Database Do the Work (8/2/07)
I recently received a question from a customer who needs to in obtain the total amount of their invoices at the matter level.
"We note the F_InvoiceMatter.TotalAmount field. Is this simply the sum of TotalFee, TotalDisbursement, and TotalOther? In our current report, we actually add those three.
Having a separate total item seems redundant, but perhaps it has something to do with the ability to change invoices during the approval process? What should we use in our report to get the actual approved total?"
Some customers need to use the different fields to make business decisions. For example, whether the law firm is charging an appropriate hourly rate is tied to TotalFees, while whether they are overpaying for copies would be tied to TotalOther.
The TotalAmount filed is a calculated field, which allows the database to do the math internally. This field will always accurately represent the total of the Fees, Disbursements and Other amounts.
Include this field in your reports – rather than letting the reports do the math – and they will be accurate and run faster.
– Jim Harris
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- New teaching and learning techniques (7/27/07)
We have been spending alot of time lately trying to better understand learning techniques so we can help our users learn
the application quicker and more efficienlty. For example, we have picked up techniques like "periodization"
which is the layering of information into small bytes. We want people to be at thier peak, once a system is installed,
not just trying to figure it out.
Education professionals now believe that people must process information 7 times in order to learn.
We have adjusted our workflows accordingly and our process now includes:
- Telling
- Reading
- Showing
- Reiterating
- Sampling
Our objective is to modify our program so our client leads can (1) better understand the product and
(2) better communicate it to others in thier organizations.
– Janet Coleman
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- Outside Counsel Screen Permissions (7/27/07)
It is up to the administrator of your outside law firms to either grant permissions for thier employees
to view or work with different areas of the application.
There is a permissions area on the same screen they use to change a user´s name and password.
If a user (outside counsel employees) is not permitted to add line items to a budget,
the administrator for that outside counsel can check, and change, the permission settings for that individual.
– Jim Harris
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- Anticipate moving on of "Knowledge Owners" (7/25/07)
As our clients use thier system, we recommend they try to limit "on the fly" edits.
It is good to assume that no one with any knowledge of the current situation will be around when the data needs to be accessed,
either for a long–term report or an upgrade.
Make sure that all data is complete, clear and organized in long text fields where necessary so future generations can get full
value of your hard work.
– Janet Coleman
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- What is the difference between a "Party" & "Entity"? (7/24/07)
Believe it or not the Lawtrac database tracks Parties and Entities in the database in the same tables;
so the data elements collected are pretty much the same.
A "Party" should always be an individual – i.e. "John Doe".
An "Entity" should never be an individual but rather a company, real estate location or a group of individuals.
The Entity tool is a great way of grouping together all the individual Parties within a class action.
You can have fifty parties grouped together as an entity and all you have to do is attach the entity to the matter record and
the association is made to all the parties.
In determining if a record should be added to a matter as a Party or Entity a good rule of thumb is "Follow The Money".
If your company is in a position whereby it may have to write a check to "John Doe"
then had him as an individual party so you can track the payments.
If the check is going to be written to a "non–individual" then set it up as an Entity.
One last thing... do not forget to set your own company up as an Entity in your database.
That way you can track payments from your company to Parties or other Entities directly within matter records.
– Jim Harris
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- Clean up prior to Lawtrac implementation (7/23/07)
One of the biggest implementation challenges we face is "unclean" data in legacy systems.
We recently managed a conversion from an Oracle platform product that is not specialized for legal.
The organization was criss–crossed, with legal information intermixed with a business unit.
Implementations run most efficiently when the data is already hierarchical.
While it may seem wasteful to clean up data in an obsolete system,
often it is worthwhile in order to ensure a simpler conversion to Lawtrac.
– Janet Coleman
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