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

Conflicts in the Universe of Practice Management

I often think of things from a different perspective.

For example, when we look at the conflicts software on the market today we might say a majority of the programs are offered by practice management firms. It's offered as an add-in or a module in order to assist with the workflow of accepting new business.

The tools offered are adequate for the purpose of accepting business, but are the results the best they could be for the purpose of mitigating the risk of accepting new business? Is it saving the most amount of time and effort for attorneys and the conflicts team? Is it providing highly automated, easy to produce and consume reports? Does it fit in with your firm's practices, or do you find yourself using "work arounds" and manual processes to make it function within your firm?

Conflicts of Interest Checks deserve a laser focus. The financial risk associated with an errant conflicts check is enormous, and we must consider that includes the risk of losing additional clients due to a simple clerical error in our field.

A conflicts-specific workbench that suits the needs of a conflicts checking process should be its own well designed, well defined, organized planet within the universe of the broader practice management platform.

RION Corp. is in the process of selecting beta test candidates. If you are interested in learning more, please find my contact information below. Thanks, and I look forward to speaking with you soon!

Cori Blackburn
224.277.3855
cori.blackburn@rioncorp.com

Malpractice Insurance & CoI Avoidance

It is a good idea for all law firms of all sizes to have malpractice insurance, and we all know that comes at a price. In 2002 the ABA published a paper called "Controlling Legal Malpractice Insurance Cost and Availability in a Changing Marketplace".

It focuses on eight parts of the firm, that with a few focused efforts can drive down the cost of your malpractice insurance.

1. Docket & Calendar Control
2. Mail Handling
3. Conflict of Interest Avoidance
4. Serving as Corporate Director/Officer
5. File Opening Procedure
6. Fees & Billing Practices
7. Work Product Control/PeerReview
8. Client Selection

We see the third focus area is Conflicts of Interest Avoidance. Since this is our wheelhouse, we should take responsibility and actively participate in lowering malpractice costs.

Here's the CliffsNotes of what's recommended in this article:

• Be familiar with the Model & Code for Conflicts of Interest
• Keep current with recent case law regarding Conflicts of Interest for the latest interpretations.
• Even a robust and sophisticated Conflicts Checking system can only be as high quality as the information that's entered into it.
• The commitment to the Conflicts Checking System, Policies & Procedures must be firm-wide.
• Continuing education for Conflicts Avoidance should have an established and important place.
• Have a written policy & guidelines around Conflicts Avoidance with procedures and system use outlined, and stick to it.
• Firm members should not enter into business until firm management has approved.

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

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

Conflicts-Centric Highlights from ILTA's 2014 Tech Survey!

In looking at ILTA's 2014 Technology Survey, we noticed some statistics that might be important to conflicts professionals. Note that the respondents to this survey are on the IT side of the house; but because acting as the liaison between IT and legal is part of the job, these results may be interesting to you:

·      A surprising number of firms reported that they do not use any software for conflict-of-interest management (citing the following responses: it is not applicable, we do not track it, or we do it manually). Note that responses from three firms with >700 attorneys are not available.

·      Firms are facing an increasingly competitive market, and leadership is taking note that cutting cost is no longer the most effective measure for increasing profitability – meaning everyone must learn to do more with less. “…the ratio of staff to attorneys continue(s) to fall, which puts pressure on available resources.”

·      A majority of firms with <350 attorneys have no business intake program to speak of.

·      An overwhelming majority of firms with >350 attorneys are MOST concerned with security and risk management. While the IT perspective for risk management is a broad focus, the degree of accuracy and precision related to the processes in conflicts of interest and business intake can contribute to managing risk.

·      Alternatively the overwhelming majority of firms with <350 attorneys are MOST concerned with managing change. This is counterintuitive because most believe the smaller the firm, the more agile and flexible they should be. I think this speaks to the need for centralized IT when a firm reaches a certain size - but it's also encouraging to anyone with ideas related to doing more with less in a larger firm.

The 2014 Technology Survey reports the input of 454 firms representing more than 106,000 attorneys and 217,000 total users.

Here is the link to the report:  http://www.iltanet.org/Downloads/2014-Tech-Survey.pdf

RION Corp. has a survey which is open at this time, and we are looking to include data from the perspective of conflicts analysts. We encourage your participation if your career intersects with this portion of business intake at law firms: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D2H2FZV

And a big thank you from me to anyone who has participated in the survey already!!

Cori Blackburn

Executive VP of Marketing & Sales

RION Corp.

cori.blackburn@rioncorp.com

Welcome to RION Corp!

Hello out there to all our fans, friends, and family that are supporting us through our first few months as a business! We are very excited to get to know our clients and help them in working towards Enlightened Efficiency within the realm of legal conflicts analysis through the launch of our signature conflicts analysis platform: RION.

RION stands for Real-time Intake Optimization for New-business, and it is based on a need that was seen by our CEO for an automated family tree model to be developed for use by Conflicts Analysts around the world. He has worked as a conflicts analyst for many years, and thought to himself "there must be an easier way to do this, I can't believe it's not more automated." 

RION will drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to make a decision on weather or not a law firm can accept business - and we hope to make lives easier for conflicts analysts who are in the office slaving away; as well as attorneys who are out in the field, as this system will be available on any mobile device. This means that analysts can do more work in less time, and attorneys can take on new business faster than ever before - all while detached from their office.

Our tagline is "Enlightened Efficiency". This means that we will continue to seek out innovations that will revolutionize the legal industry by helping analysts, lawyers, and staff to put their data to better use. Our tools and products will always aim to drive productivity, cost effectiveness, and profitability.

Because we will be constructing several systems over the coming months and years, we embrace the opportunity to create a community around Enlightened Efficiency. We will be working in parallel with our software development efforts to establish a virtual tribe of conflicts analysts, legal experts, software developers, data geeks, and other interested parties. We envision this tribe will have an open virtual forum to discuss ideas, and we hope it will help us mold the future of the RION platform as we grow and expand.

We invite you to stay tuned!! Here's what's next:

We have a web demo coming up on April 15th, at 12:00pm (CST). Please contact ryan.vago@rioncorp.com for a calendar invitation!

We are accepting applications from interested beta-testers for thirty-day trial of RION, which will begin shortly after the demo.

The beta-test will be followed by a paid proof of concept period (soft launch) in the May-August timeframe, and then the ability to transition into a twelve month contract will become available.

Special discounts for early adopters may apply when it's time to sign contracts, so please inquire and make sure to mention you heard about it on our blog!

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Website: www.rioncorp.com