With LAWFUSION you get automatic creation of all the necessary crime forms at the push of a button, including AF1, AF2, LF1, LF2, LF1O, LF1FF, CRM 7, CRM11, CRM18, CRM18A, 5144 + all other relevant crime forms.  LAWFUSION even makes obsolete forms available to those firms that still want them – i.e.  some firms may choose to continue to produce them for their own administrative purposes.

LAWFUSION supports automatic population of all crime forms relating to Advocates’ Graduated Fee Scheme (AGFS) and Litigators’ Graduated Fee Scheme (LGFS) for electronic submission via the CCD  (Claim for Crown Court Defence) system, as paper forms are no longer accepted from 31-10-17. As well as all the claim forms, LAWFUSION also enables users to quickly produce application forms across the whole criminal defence library.

All the relevant crime forms necessary for criminal defence work can be coded into your LAWFUSION workflow crime charts, for auto-production, to ensure the right forms are produced at the right time with the correct values.  Forms are then made available in the document library for the case alongside other case-relevant correspondence.

LAWFUSION offers crime billing for all stages of criminal defence work, from Police Station investigations to Crown Court trials and appeals. With full integration to the accounts system and auto-form production,  users can quickly record attendances, disbursements and expenses to create a Legal Aid compliant claim and automatically update the accounting ledgers.

This module enables quick and effective case costing and billing, guiding the user through the complex processes associated with Legal Aid claims, schemes and systems as well as private-paying client cases ensuring the appropriate rates and fees are used.  On completion of a bill  claimed through the monthly submission process LAWFUSION can optionally raise the accounts bill and take payment by transferring funds from your LAA holding account to the appropriate case ledger. (The recent LAA ‘unused material’ fee increases and for the work involved in passing cases from ‘Magistrates to Crown Court’ are reflected in LAWFUSION.)

Inbuilt analysis reports include Standard Monthly Payments (SMP) breakdowns and allow instant overviews on fees raised, grouped by a variety of criteria enabling partners to continually monitor profitability.

LAWFUSION provides Criminal lawyers with the highly secure tools they need to handle private and confidential information on their clients’ behalf, taking care of all concerns about client confidentiality. Documents can be accessed via a secure web portal for your clients to read, and a monitor tells you when a client has logged in. Your clients can get their answers quickly and easily from the Internet without having to contact you directly.

Select Legal Systems WAS the first legal software supplier to offer an online Case Tracker back in 2004. The success of this service is due partly to the unparalleled flexibility provided by LAWFUSION’s powerful workflow engine. As each matter is progressed, details of changes can be published confidentially, strictly to be viewed by your client only.

Whilst a good court bundle cannot win a bad case, a bad bundle can damage a good case. With LAWFUSION you are giving your users quality tools to empower them to manage their cases successfully. The Digital Court Bundler is one of the most popular LAWFUSION modules, used by different departments for many different areas of law, but especially relevant for crime firms. It has been regularly enhanced and improved over the years as Team LAWFUSION have worked closely with users, addressing their court bundle needs. It allows users to pull everything together for court easily and efficiently, automatically generating a contents page and page numbering for the whole bundle in one PDF for saving to the case. If your people are still sweating over manual bundles , or the firm is paying per bundle for the use of 3rd-party bundle tools, check out this module here:  DIGITAL COURT BUNDLE SOFTWARE – as LAWFUSION users it is yours at no extra cost.

LAWFUSION’s specialist time recording for crime work provides everything a criminal lawyer could possibly want in terms of the ability to record time quickly and accurately for all activities across multiple files with provision for billing codes and notes.

At the point of entering time, users can also enter expenses and mileage.

London or National rates are catered for and the system ensures users can only select applicable charge rates for the stage being worked on and validates entries as they are input.

To further aid the management of bulk criminal defence, via LAWFUSION criminal law firms can perform their monthly bulk upload to Legal Aid Agency (LAA) online and also use reports to compare the figures submitted to the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) against the amounts received in the monthly payments.

The monthly submission is quick and easy and generates a wealth of reports to verify information is submitted correctly to the LAA.

Select Legal Systems, the authors of LAWFUSION, pride themselves on staying ahead of the game with any regulation changes from the Legal Aid Agency. One good example of this is the work Team LAWFUSION  has done to reflect the recent increased fees re ‘unused material’ and also the increased fees for the extra work involved in ‘passing cases from Magistrates to Crown Court’.

To cater for legal aid claims which are assessed and approved by the Legal Aid Agency, LAWFUSION provides an Assessed Claims Manager screen which can be used to manage all assessed claims including form production, payments, appeals and monitoring of overdue claims. This module handles not only Litigator Graduated Fees Scheme (LGFS) and Advocate Graduated Fees Scheme (AGFS), but also Magistrates’ court non-standard claims and Police Station exceptional claims, all with auto form production. For claims which have been reduced, or not accepted by the Legal Aid Agency, appeal forms can be produced at the click of a button.

When a Fee Earner claims an expense on the system, such as mileage or car parking it is available immediately for billing as a disbursement (if appropriate), for submitting to the LAA (for legal aid claims) and also for analysis and reporting.

As the expense is entered it becomes part of an expense claim that is later submitted for approval (where necessary) without any duplication of effort. The Fee Earner ticks a box to indicate he/she has a receipt for the expense and for those striving for a paperless office, receipts can be scanned in and attached to the expense claim. The system handles different rates for mileage i.e. if a Fee Earner is paid mileage at 25p per mile, but the firm has agreed mileage will be charged out at 40p per mile – the system picks up the relevant rates and bills the client and pays the Fee Earner accordingly.

As there can be a variety of outcomes at the police station and Magistrates’ court, LAWFUSION’s advanced document production system allows fee earners to answer a few simple questions about the case to get the perfect outcome letter, whether it be about a conditional bail or a charge to court.

For firms who want to streamline client correspondence, the system can also automatically detect if a client care letter has been sent out and if not, put in an appropriate paragraph about client care, ensuring compliance is adhered to at all times.

Using LAWFUSION’s powerful workflow functionality, law firms can customise how they want to manage the risk of cases and check that compliance is being adhered to. Fully LEXCEL compliant, LAWFUSION provides the tools that enable users to ensure key information such as Legal Aid references, applications and correct funding is in place before work begins.

LAWFUSION presents a ‘state of play’ snapshot at a glance showing:

• Funding information e.g. representation order details
• Any pleas predicted or given
• The strength of evidence
• General level of risk
• Whether the file is ready for a LEXCEL inspection
• Alerts for cases that have not been worked on for a specific period of time
• User-friendly file review system

As standard, LAWFUSION Crime includes a full Practice diary and task planner. 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. Linking with the address book – the software will automatically default diary entries to the case assigned Court or Police Station etc.

Users are able to open and access case information directly from an appointment record. Also diary appointments can be marked as complete in the diary once they have taken place and the system will notify key personnel if appointments don’t take place or are overdue. Clicking the Complete button against a diary entry can be set to trigger the automatic creation of a letter or email. LAWFUSION will also capture claim details on court duties as they are completed within the system notifying supervisors if duty sessions have not been completed or claimed.

Police station views can be set up to manage police station duties assignment, cover and firm rotas and the diary can be synchronised with your personal MS Outlook account. Read more.