The next generation of pro bono workflow management: Firm Manager
13 Oct 2022
Justice Connect’s award-winning Innovation Team is proud to launch Firm Manager, a powerful, intuitive, and secure system to manage the work of pro bono teams in law firms.
Globally, over 5 billion people have a legal problem each year. 1.5 billion people cannot access justice, and 253 million people experience extreme conditions of injustice. Through our expertise in technology and human-centred design and nearly 30 years working in access to justice, we design solutions to harvest the significant capacity of the private legal profession and bridge the justice gap.
Listening and responding to the sector’s needs
Following the successful rollout and adoption of our Pro Bono Portal in 2019, which is now used by 17 legal services and 533 law firms around the world, we’ve witnessed a growing appetite amongst the legal profession to expand our features to strengthen and complement law firms’ internal pro bono practice. From this, we developed Firm Manager.
“We are proud to launch Firm Manager, which builds on our approach to developing technology-enabled and system-level solutions to address common pain points in the sector, and help build a joined-up, low-cost ecosystem that will improve the effectiveness of the pro bono workforce,” Justice Connect’s CEO Chris Povey said.
Co-designing a solution with leading global firms
Firm Manager was developed through an innovative partnership and co-design process with top global law firms DLA Piper and Norton Rose Fulbright. Justice Connect worked closely with these firms to identify pain points, efficiency gains and process improvements in their pro bono practice. DLA Piper also provided a 2-year, full time secondee from their Pro Bono team to work on the project. Alongside Justice Connect’s 30+ years’ experience as a clearinghouse, Firm Manager’s design is rooted in a sophisticated understanding of the end-to-end pro bono process.
Chris Owen, Partner and National Pro Bono Lead at Norton Rose Fulbright in Australia noted: “It has been great to be able to work with Justice Connect to design and develop an innovative product that has the potential to be a real gamechanger in terms of reducing the administration of managing a pro bono practice, with the consequence of allowing practitioners to devote more of their resource to deliver front line legal pro bono services”.
Firm Manager aims to streamline the intake, triage, and placement of pro bono matters for law firms, so they are able to be more efficient and effective. This ultimately helps law firms assist more people who need legal help, contribute back to their communities, measure the impact of their pro bono work, and free up time to focus on higher value work.
Firm Manager’s features include:
- A streamlined workflow to manage the entire lifecycle of pro bono matters, from intake to closure to outcomes and impact assessment;
- A central place to keep track of all information relating to pro bono matters and their progress status;
- Powerful reporting capabilities so firms can measure and evaluate their work, and gain insights to inform decision making and program planning; and
- Potential for integration with system-wide use of the Firm Manager for easy matter management in the firm’s own system.
Why not-for-profit ownership matters
When firms purchase a software product from a not-for-profit like Justice Connect, they are gaining the benefit of the product as well as the benefits of not-for-profit ownership. Firms can be confident any profit goes back into Justice Connect’s charitable work, which isn’t beholden to investors or loans to repay. We are committed to growing our products in service of supporting pro bono ecosystems through systems that match unmet need with pro bono capacity. This means we provide affordable licencing fees, a consistent, fair and transparent pricing model, and minimal maintenance costs.
Our product roadmap is built with firm feedback in mind, ensuring our products develop in response to our licensees and the sector at large. Our long-term commitment to the product means we have no vision to sell our tools onto a third party. We are also building an interoperable product suite that is run in various jurisdictions around the world, with opportunities for API connectedness and cross-platform analytics. Adopting our products means contributing to a more connected, intuitive and impactful pro bono sector.
Scaling up for sector transformation
We are excited to soon be entering the next phase of scaling Firm Manager for wider adoption across the sector, so more firms can improve their pro bono practice and increase access to justice. By empowering the legal help ecosystem with tools like Firm Manager, we stand to build a sector more equipped to bridge the justice gap.
If your firm is interested in learning more about Firm Manager, visit our website and book in a demo today.
Learn moreFirm Manager marks the next step in Justice Connect’s award-winning suite of digital innovation and not-for-profit technology projects. Undertaking some of the most cutting-edge work at the intersection of justice, communications, and technology, our acclaimed Innovation and Engagement program works on a range of projects that aim to scale our reach and impact, as well as improve the experience of people seeking legal help and the lawyers that help them.
Read more about our award-winning Digital Innovation work.
