Streamlining case management operations for a large U.S. county

Client background

This county’s Office of Corporation Counsel (OCC) serves a county with over 950,000 residents, acting as the chief legal counsel to its departments, offices, boards, commissions and elected officials. The OCC’s three primary functions include offering general legal advice, providing quasi-prosecutorial functions in mental health, guardianship and protective placement, open records requests, public meetings and providing litigation defense services for an insurance corporation owned by participating counties.

The business challenge

OCC previously implemented a legal case management system, but the department continued to face difficulties in managing their legal cases effectively. This was due to a rushed system implementation that failed to fully capture the department’s needs and lacked comprehensive training for departmental stakeholders, leading to low adoption of the software and its supporting processes. The departments’ challenges included reliance on manual or non-digitized processes, the use of multiple systems, inconsistent data, lack of visibility into crucial deadlines and case management milestones, and decentralized file storage.

Strategy and solution

To address process and technology challenges faced by the OCC, Baker Tilly facilitated three discovery workshops focused on case and task management, court documentation and e-discovery. They conducted market and industry vendor research and leveraged an internal inventory of existing requirements to quickly identify and prioritize over 150 functional and technical requirements essential for the department's operations.

These requirements were reviewed with the solution vendor to determine if the existing system could meet them. The review revealed a 92% fit, achievable through the current system or third-party integrations that had not yet been implemented.

For requirements that could not be met by the solution provider, Baker Tilly collaborated with the OCC and the solution provider to identify system and process workflows that would improve the remaining technology challenges.

OCC gained clarity in understanding their issues were not solely technological. With comprehensive training and optimization of their existing software and third-party integrations, the department could now focus on improving adoption and resolving their challenges without resorting to a time-consuming and costly software replacement.