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Crime Case Management Standard Features

Features, only available as expensive add-ons with other systems, often come as standard with LAWFUSION™ Crime. To find out how these features can help your firm, please visit our Crime Case Management and Billing page. The following list, while not exhaustive, details some of the main features available in LAWFUSION™ Crime:

• Time Recording
• Case Costing & Billing
• Case and Document Management
• Centralised Address Book
• Police Station & Court Duties
• Personalised Case File & Court Diary
• SMS Text Messaging
• Reporting Suite

Time Recording

LAWFUSION™ incorporates a full time recording facility as standard with a specialised crime time entry system.

• The time recording system ensures users can only select applicable charge rates for the stage being worked on and validates entries as they are input.
• The system comes with pre configured charging rates and tables and the ability to disable areas of work which are not applicable so selection lists are relevant.
• Whilst entering time users can also enter expenses and mileage.
• Attendance notes can be classified by selecting a note category and the print layout configured to allow for existing company formats to be maintained and logos included.
• After entering attendance or advocacy the system can automatically run workflow tasks to record the outcome of a hearing and record further hearing details.
• The ability to record at London or National rates is catered for along with the appropriate calculations on fees for designated areas.

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Case Costing & Billing

The Crime system enables quick and effective costing and billing of all work with all the relevant bill information being gathered on one screen guiding the user through the process.

• When a user requests a file to be billed the system will calculate the bill value incorporating expenses and disbursements and produce the appropriate forms. The following bill forms are automatically produced if applicable CDS11, CDS18, CDS7, 5144, 5144A.
• With the graduated fees module installed the system will also calculate and produce the litigator and advocate graduated fees producing the LF1 and 5144F claim forms.
• On completion of a bill that is claimed through the monthly submission process the system can optionally raise the accounts bill and take payment by transferring funds from your LSC holding account to the appropriate case ledger.
• After billing a stage of work the system will automatically move the case on to the next stage dependant upon the outcome entered by the user.
• The claims assessment module allows easy management of the assessed bills including the CDS7, CDS18, LF1, 5144, 5144A, 5144F.
• The system can raise and track appeals made and produce the LF2 and letters to the appropriate authority.
• Receiving payments against assessed bills will generate the accounts bill and take payment by transferring funds from your designated account to the appropriate case ledger.
• Inbuilt analysis reports include SMP breakdowns and allow instant overviews on fees raised grouped by a variety of criteria ensuring management has the ability to manage contracts effectively.

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Case and Document Management

The crime suite comes with a flexible and tailorable workflow system including a set of precedents as standard. It is easily modified to meet with the methods of your firm and will enable you to monitor and track the key steps and stages involved in individual cases.

• All standard letters and documents can be called up in an instant, automatically assembling and pre-populating the information from the case, (Defendants name(s), Court details, bail dates, etc) saving you having to constantly re-enter the same details time and time again.
• Forms can be produced with fields already completed that just require a user to check them before printing.
• All documents and correspondence is automatically filed to the case including emails and can be categorised for easy retrieval.
• All correspondence can be managed through the system whether it be Letters, Emails or Fax’s.
• The system can optionally convert documents into PDF format to make them more secure when sending them electronically.
• Bills and accounts chitties are automatically saved to the case correspondence and filed in the appropriate folders.

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Centralised Address Book

LAWFUSION™ centralises your everyday contacts and addresses reducing duplication and management. This facility ensures the immediate availability of contacts to your staff, if a contact needs to change it only needs to be amended once for the system to automatically recognise the change and reflect it in every case thereon.

• Police Station, Courts, Prisons are intelligently linked to the LSC’s code system making the correspondence side link easily with the billing and costing.
• Courts can be grouped and selected by type making selection quicker.
• Address’s can be flagged with preference giving the ability to view the most frequently used quickly whilst making a full more comprehensive list available at the click of a button.
• Any address type you require can be catered for including Counsel, Probation Officers, Social Workers, Hospitals etc. All other relevant parties can also be stored and maintained by the system centrally.
• Query by example address searches can be performed allowing quicker location and selection.

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Police Station & Court Duties

The software has several features to make the recording and management of duty work easier with LAWFUSION™.

Police Stations

• Selecting a police station from the supplied list will automatically select the LSC Police Station code and active area scheme it belongs to.
• Whilst the system holds a full list of all the police stations it is likely that you will only attend local stations to your firm. You can customise the selection list to only list your preferred stations but obtain the full list with a single click when needed.
• The Police Duty Rotas can be configured and assigned against the schemes.
• Open and access case information directly from an appointment.
• New diary entries can automatically default to the case assigned station.

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Courts

• Selecting a court from the supplied list will automatically select the LSC court code.
• Whilst the system holds a full list of all the courts it is likely that you will only attend local courts to your firm. You can customise the selection list to only list your preferred courts but obtain the full list with a single click when needed.
• New diary entries can automatically default to the case assigned court.
• Open and access case information directly from an appointment.
• Record court duty claims and automatically bill on accounts.

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Personalised Case File & Court Diary

As standard, LAWFUSION™ Crime includes a full Practice diary and task planner for individuals, case files and court dates.

• Add an appointment or activity just once (i.e. a specific hearing date) and the system will reflect it against the appropriate individual, crime file and court.
• Configure diary views that allow you to manage groups of appointments with tailorable layouts and presentation.
• Mark diary appointments as complete once they have been attended and have the system notify key personal when they have not and are overdue.
• Automate letter production from the completion of diary entries.
• Capture claim details on court duties as they are completed with the system notifying supervisors if duty sessions have not been completed/claimed.
• Setup Police Station duty views to help manage what duties are being covered when and where including who they where originally assigned to.
• Create firm rota diary views making monitoring of company rota’s easier.
• Record Court, Police Station, Prison and Hospital Attendances and other key date appointments. The diary can also be synchronised with your personal MS Outlook so they can be exported to your laptop, ultra mobile phone (Windows Mobile) or PDA, which gives the constant availability of information wherever you are.

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SMS Text Messaging

Text messaging is inexpensive, simple to use and instant. As an alternative to email, SMS is an excellent, discrete and immediate messaging medium. Users can also create templates and workflows that include text messaging. This means that the workflow automatically sends SMS messages when key events are reached.

Users can also choose to manually send a text message on an ad-hoc basis if they need to.

The case file history is maintained for any messages sent with a copy being placed in the correspondence.

Read our featured article on SMS Text Messaging for further information and how we incorporate it into LAWFUSION™.

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Reporting Suite

The management of an LSC contract can be time consuming particularly with the variety of reports that can be requested by the CDS and LSC. With the LAWFUSION™ system a standard set of reports is supplied that caters for the normal requirements.

Our system enables firms to keep the time spent managing a contract to a minimum by having the system record all the necessary details at the relevant time and then produce this in the required report when needed. Fee earners, cashiers and managements time entering and gathering this information is kept to a minimum freeing up time to do other things that require their expertise and not just their time.

The LAWFUSION™ report generator further allows the bespoke nature of some firms requirements to be met providing an easy to use interface that generates and distributes the tailored reports when required.

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Benefits for You

This page contains details of just some of the features in LAWFUSION™ Crime Case Management. For information on how your firm can get immediate benefits from implementing LAWFUSION™ Crime in your practice, visit our Crime Case Management and Billing page.