Rion: Conflicts in the Cloud Integration with Clio: Practice Management Software Now Available

Click here for information on connecting our integration with your Clio account.

Pricing

We offer monthly and annual subscriptions with straight-forward pricing. No contracts, and no commitments. With all subscriptions you receive unlimited (24/7) access to our entire suite of tools and features.

-          Monthly Subscription: $15 per Billing Attorney / month

-          Annual Subscription: $150 per Billing Attorney / year

-          All subscriptions include a 30 Day Free Trial (no credit card required)

Features

·        Our cloud based software provides access to Billing Attorneys, Administrative Users, and Conflict Analysts, from your office or mobile device. 

·        The Rion algorithm detects potential conflicts with clients, adversaries, and other parties.

·        Upload and store documents including engagement letters, correspondence, intake forms, etc.

·        Export Conflict Check Report to PDF, or send it directly to your Clio account.

·        Clio integration provides both importing and exporting functionality, allowing you to update and create new matters in Rion and sync with Clio in real time.

Problem Worth Solving

Conflict checks are the cornerstone for avoiding risk in taking on new business, so it is imperative to hold the process in a high regard. It is particularly important for clients of legal services provides to know that their lawyers are ethical.

Our Solution

Rion helps lawyers maintain ethics and provide their clients with transparency through streamlined due diligence, which allows them to spend more time on billable work.

Join Today!

At www.conflictchecksonline.com

Emerging Legal Technologies and Malpractice

New technologies have evolved the way in which legal practices serve client needs. Some features and functions of legal practice management software include: case management, time tracking, document assembly, contract management, calendaring and docketing, and time and billing.

Not only is the purpose of such software, as discussed above, to assist law firms with everyday practice needs, but many seek to reduce the possibilities of engaging in legal malpractice.

Essentially, it can be agreed that regardless of a lawyer’s competency to handle a legal matter, the possibility of a malpractice claims become increasingly more possible as the matter becomes more complex. Some of the major areas in which malpractice claims tend to follow, involve, but are not limited to, the following: deadlines, failure to settle, poor management of expectations/poor communication, lack of knowledge or preparation, and conflicts of interest.

According to one report on legal malpractice, depending on which malpractice carrier supplied the information, the highest figures reported 12 out of every 100 attorneys being targeted by malpractice suits.^[1] Figures from the same report, found the median figures being between $10,000 and $30,000 for total malpractice damages, in which a claimant was successful in recuperating. Furthermore, about 9.4 to 12 percent of malpractice damages exceeded $100,000.

  

1 This particular report stated, the “[Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company of Kentucky] and [Wisconsin Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company], report frequency of claims per 100 lawyers insured... WILMIC shows rates ranging from about 3.75 to 4.75 100 lawyers while for LMICK the corresponding rates range from 2.71 to 3.79 claims for 100 lawyers... The [Oregon State Bar Professional Liability Fund]... claim rate was about 12 per 100 insured.“ Reports for the Attorneys’ Liability Assurance Society are much lower because it reports claims per 1,000 lawyers and figures 6.5 and 8.5 per 1,000 lawyers since about 2000. Herbert M. Kritzer & Neil Vidmar, When the Lawyer Screws Up: A portrait of Legal Malpractice Claims and their Resolution (2015), available at 
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6182&context=faculty_scholarship 

THE RION CORP STANDARD:

RION Corp. has developed a cutting edge conflicts software application that is accessible in the Cloud. RION provides a secure, audit friendly, intuitive software program that is easy to use, highly accessible and customizable, and provides value through time and cost savings.

We promise that with our software, law firms are able to engage in the representation of clients knowing they are not violating the professional rules of responsibility.

MALPRACTICE VIOLATIONS BY TYPE

Type of Error	Percentage	U.S. Ranking
Legal Competency	11.3%	1
Planning Error	8.9%	2
Failure to Investigate	8.8%	3
Failure to File Documents	8.6%	4
Fail to Calendar	6.7%	5
Fail to know Deadlines	6.6%	6
Procrastination	5.9%	7
Fail to Obtain Consent	5.4%	8
Confilct of Interest	5.3%	9
Fraud	5.0%	10

* These are the top 10 violations reported by the American Bar Association. The complete chart listing all violations can be found at http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_home/law_practice_archive/lpm_magazine_webonly_webonly07101.html.

“Conflict of interest claims were down slightly to just 5 percent of all claims.  Computerized conflict checks, combined with standardized conflict resolution procedures, resulted in some improvements in this area.” 

* Randy Evans and Shari Klevens, How High Is Your Legal Malpractice Risk?, The Recorder, available at http://www.therecorder.com/id=12 02740408791/How-High-Is- Y our- Legal-Malpractice- Risk?mcode=0&curindex=0&curpage =2.

JOIN US TODAY!!!!!!

With our legal practice software we can lower the possibility of embarrassing, time-consuming, and potentially expensive risks associated with the failure to complete a comprehensive conflict check. With our highly efficient system we can lower the risk of an ethical violation for the failure to exhaustively complete a conflict check analysis. RION Corp. can offer affordable prices that will depend on the size of the firm. We also offer assistance in helping your firm successfully integrate our cutting edge software. 

Eric Fortineaux, Esq.
eric@rioncorp.com

Have you heard?

We recently read in a legal ethics article that conflict of interest claims were down slightly to just 5 percent of all malpractice claims because computerized conflict checks, combined with standardized conflict resolution procedures, resulted in some improvements in this area.

View the full article here:

http://www.therecorder.com/id=1202740408791/How-High-Is-Your-Legal-Malpractice-Risk?cmp=share_email

Please contact us with questions, and be sure to ask for a demo!

Thank you,
RION Corp.

Evaluating Conflicts Software - Part 6

Today's publication is centered around Intake Forms & Conflicts-centric needs in evaluating conflicts checking software. A conflicts checking software program that takes the time to address our concerns about intake forms and items that make our jobs easier is one worth considering very seriously. A conflicts module out of a practice management suite may have a hard time competing with a stand-alone in this area.

Here are some very specific questions to ask your software vendors:

• Is your intake form online or does it need to be fed manually?
• Can we revise our own intake forms?
• If not, do we need to pay for consulting so you can customize our forms for us?
• Are ethics walls stored?
• Are Conflict of Interest Waiver Letters stored?
• Do you have a thesaurus feature?
• Can we add aliases?
• How many? (you're looking for unlimited)
• Do you have soundex or phonetic search capabilities?
• Is there a field for comments?
• Can we manually select/deselect content before publishing the report?  

Again, these questions are from Sandra Roberts' book "Creating Conflicts of Interest Procedures for Protecting You and Your Firm from Malpractice" (Amazon).


Are there other conflicts-centric needs that aren't addressed on this list?

Cori Blackburn

cori.blackburn@rioncorp.com
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

Benefits of a Standardized Process for Conflict Checks

I have been reading a book by Sandra J. Roberts called "Creating Conflicts of Interest Procedures for Protecting You and Your Firm from Malpractice", and have found it aligned with what I already knew; while providing additional detail and ideas for our Conflicts Analysis Standardization Effort (C.A.S.E.).

Have a look at a part of the Foreward:

"The objective for an effective conflicts of interest department is to create one that processes client names and associated party information accurately, efficiently and rapidly with minimal time taken away from the attorney's legal representations and valuable billable hours. Developing these effective conflicts of interest procedures has many benefits. Not only can effective procedures enable attorneys to reduce their risk, but it may help lower their professional liability insurance premiums. In order to do that, the process does not need to be cumbersome. It can be completed quickly with the right procedures in place regardless of the size of the firm. These procedures include implementation of the following actions:

• Entering accurate information into a conflicts database.
• Searching party information properly through the conflicts database and other research database resources.
• Reviewing the results to eliminate extraneous information.
• Clearing and approving the applicable results.
• Setting up further procedures to manage potential conflicts of interest issues."

While this is a very simplified 30,000 foot view of conflicts, I think it speaks to the Conflicts Standard that we're looking to develop at RION Corp. under the C.A.S.E.

To that end, we should have in mind the possible benefits of setting up and implementing the standard:

• Reduced Firm & Attorney Risk
• Reduced Insurance Premiums
• Increased Confidence in Accepting Business
• Creation of Competency Standards
• Increased Analyst Confidence = Additional Speed
• Best Practice Always Used
• Heightened Efficiency in Conflicts and Business Intake
• Increased Potential for Profitability

How does your malpractice policy affect your CoI program or vice versa?  Please share in the comments section below.

Cori Blackburn
RION Corp.
224-277-3855
cori.blackburn@rioncorp.com

Navigating through the Various Rules of Professional Conduct

To catch potential conflicts of interest, firms can easily keep track of the clients, adverse parties, and third parties involved in each matter, in a database that can be searched for a record of the parties involved in new matters, and for new parties involved in existing matters.

Here is a summary of some of the American Bar Assiciation Model Rules of Professional Conduct that govern conflicts in the legal industry.

Rule 1.7 - Conflict of Interest: Current Clients

The typical client-lawyer conflict of interest in a U.S. law firm involves the representation of a client who is directly adverse to another client, or if there is a risk that the representation will be limited by the lawyer / law firm's responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person, or by a personal interest of the lawyer.

Rule 1.8 - Conflict of Interest: Current Clients: Specific Rules

The specific rules forbid a lawyer from entering into a business transaction with a client. What happens if a business contact asks to retain a firm lawyer for a legal matter, does your firm keep a record of business relationships to catch potential conflicts?

Rule 1.9 - Duties to Former Clients

How does your firm treat former clients? If a lawyer has formerly represented a client in a matter, the rules prohibit the representation of another person in the same or a substantially related matter in which that person's interest are materially adverse to the interest of the former client, unless the former client gives informed consent confirmed in writing. 

Rule 1.10 - Imputation of Conflicts of Interest: General Rule

What about new lawyers joining the firm? Generally, while lawyers are associated in a firm, none of them are allowed to knowingly represent a client when any of them practicing alone would be prohibited from doing so.  How does your firm handle potential conflicts when lawyers are bringing in business that has not yet been screened?

All of the above rules are important reasons why it is critical to keep, in addition to the parties, a record of the description of each matter, the practice area, and the roles and relationships of each party involved in your matters. 

Further, corporate affiliations and relationships between the many parties involved in legal matters at law firms are complex and also important to know when running conflict checks. 

For more details on the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, see: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/model_rules_of_professional_conduct_table_of_contents.html

For a list of states that have adopted the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, see:
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/alpha_list_state_adopting_model_rules.html

I invite you to share your thoughts or questions in the comments section below.

Thank you,
Ryan Vago
Founder & President
RION Corp.