BigHand Workflows with Releases for the Legal Sector

BigHand has been productive in releasing updates to its award-winning software to the legal sector. 

Recently BigHand launched its latest versions of its legal task delegation solution, BigHand Workflow Management and the latest version of its market-leading Legal Resource Management adding multiple 'game-changing' features.

Workflow Management Software

Based on customer feedback and market demand, the latest release supports a wider variety of legal working practices and aims to further reduce the time that both lawyers and legal support teams spend on administrative work.

The workflow solution allows administrative work to be automatically routed to the right support staff at the right cost to the firm, maintaining visibility throughout the process. Output reports can be used by management for visibility of key metrics like work type, volume, capacity and utilization for informed resourcing and data-driven decision-making around support services.

Secretaries and support staff have greater flexibility to manage their own workloads, with the ability to delegate their work to centralized support teams and access BigHand at any time via Workflow Management’s popular iOS and Android mobile applications.

Lawyers can submit any task from their mobile device while on the go, and track the work via the app.  They can also add more detailed instructions to dictations by attaching a configurable form, resulting in faster turnaround times and improved work quality. The look and feel of the task interface for dictations has also been updated to further streamline the task delegation process.

Eric Wangler, Managing Director for BigHand’s People Productivity Solutions commented, “The global transition to permanent hybrid working, teamed with continued secretarial attrition, a challenging recruiting environment and growing client demand for cost transparency has created a seismic shift in the way law firms are structuring their support services models. As a result, we’ve seen a massive increase in the number of firms needing a more flexible task delegation solution.

“We’re excited to get this version of our Workflow Management technology into the hands of our customers and enable firms to quickly and easily delegate work to those best suited to complete it, while implementing operational structures that can provide exceptional support to both attorneys and clients.

Legal Resource Management Software

The legal resource management product enhancement is supported by recent market research, which uncovered that 82% of firms globally have implemented, or are planning to implement resource management technology in the next 24 months.

BigHand Resource Management is a cloud-based legal work allocation tool that empowers law firms to identify appropriately skilled resources, forecast utilization, manage workloads and add structure to career development for lawyers.

The release is in response to growing market challenges impacting legal work allocation, including spiralling associate salaries, lateral hiring and rising client demand for more cost-effective resourcing. It offers new features and functionality to help firms allocate work equitably and at the right cost while advancing opportunities for lawyer career development to support retention and recruitment strategies.

The release boasts a live digital opportunities board that lawyers can filter to find and register interest in work that sits outside of their skillsets or experience, enabling firms to respond to the demand from associates for better development processes. In addition, lawyers can log skills and qualifications across multiple practice areas to explore new development opportunities, while increasing the visibility of resource pools available on a firm-wide basis.

Firms can now draw comparisons of total and average chargeable hours across the firm by data points including gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation, to track progress against firm-wide DEI goals.

Integration enhancements allow firms to implement a ‘single source of the truth’ by pulling in essential data from any other operational legal. In particular, the software’s integration with information barrier systems gives firms complete control over who sees what in the system, by restricting access and visibility to specific clients and matters in line with firms’ internal processes.

Dave Cook, Global Director for Resource Management at BigHand states “We’re thrilled to release the latest version of Resource Management, with a number of exciting new features and enhancements developed in direct response to feedback from our global client base.”

“We are experiencing a huge surge in demand for our solution as firms look to create an effective and equitable working environment for their employees and clients. The new features like enhanced integration options, advanced reporting capabilities and more options to support lawyer career development has been driven by client demand so we’re very excited to get this release in law firms' hands.”

Also read top viewed Ai Legal article: The Role of AI in Legal Research.