The work behind the work.

We work inside your LEAP, on your matter cards, to the conventions your firm already uses. Matter details maintained as things change, parties recorded against the correct table types, and Person Responsible and Person Acting set properly at the outset so the matter reports correctly for the whole of its life.

What comes back to you is a matter card that reads true. Firms come to us once the file has drifted from what is actually happening on it, and reconstructing that has become somebody’s weekend.

People Cards and Organisation Cards maintained, and the relationships between them actually created, because LEAP will not do that on its own. Somebody has to link the client to the company, the company to the guarantor, the executor to the estate. We do it as the matter develops rather than in a panic afterwards.

The result is a file that stays legible to whoever picks it up next, whether that is the partner covering your leave or a costs assessor two years from now. Most firms ask for this after a handover has gone badly.

The system rather than the matters running through it. User accounts and permissions, matter type configuration, document templates, precedent maintenance, and the General Ledger Link, which is where LEAP to Xero or MYOB sync failures accumulate without announcing themselves until the two ledgers no longer agree.

LEAP ships with more than a thousand pre-configured matter types and firms cannot create their own, so the skill is in choosing correctly and configuring around what is missing. Practices tend to call us when whoever set it up has left and nobody has touched it since.

Tasks raised against the matter, assigned to a named person, and chased until they close. Critical dates entered as they arise rather than carried in somebody’s head. Where a matter type follows a standard sequence, we run it as a sequence instead of a scatter of individual reminders.

What lands back with you is a practice where nothing waits on a person who does not know it is waiting on them. This is usually what a principal asks about after a file has sat untouched for six weeks and nobody can say why.

Every document and email filed against the correct matter in Details and Correspondence, named to your convention, and findable by someone who was not there when it arrived.

The usual failure is not carelessness. It is the Outlook integration breaking on an update and nobody noticing for a fortnight, by which point correspondence is sitting in personal mailboxes and the file is incomplete without looking incomplete. We watch for that, and we put back what has already gone astray.

Paper correspondence, signed originals, counsel’s mark-ups and inherited files converted to a digital record and entered against the matter, not dropped into a folder that happens to carry the client’s name. Documents are named, dated and attributed to the right party on the way in.

Firms come to us for this in one of two situations. A matter arrives from another firm as a banker’s box, or an office move means twenty years of archive has to become searchable before the lease ends.

Duplicate cards merged, addresses and phone numbers corrected as clients move, and formatting standardised so that search returns the record. A mobile number entered with spaces on one card and without on another is two different clients as far as LEAP is concerned.

Left alone, this compounds. One client ends up with three cards, correspondence goes to an address they left years ago, and a conflict check runs clean against a name that is sitting in the system twice. We work through the database, then keep it worked through.

The reports that tell you what is actually happening. Aged WIP, the Pre-Billing Guide, Aged Debtors, matter status by fee earner. Run on a set rhythm, read before they reach you, and returned with the few lines that need a decision rather than the forty pages that need reading.

Nearly every firm has these reports available and very few run them regularly, because running them is nobody’s job in particular. It becomes ours. Principals tend to ask for this once they notice they are hearing about problems from clients first.

Time entered daily against the matter rather than rebuilt from a diary at the end of the month. AutoTime captures activity in the background and knows the difference between viewing a document and working on it, but entries still need narrating, checking and posting by a person.

Time written up late is time written down. The pre-bill then runs against a fiction, and the month is understated before anyone has queried a single invoice. This is the least glamorous service on the page and the one with the most money sitting behind it.

Bills drafted from the Pre-Billing Guide, checked against the file, and moved through the invoice lifecycle instead of left inside it. Draft - Unapproved is where invoices go to die. The work is done, the bill is written, and it waits on an approval nobody has been asked for. LEAP has published a case study on a firm carrying a three to four day invoicing delay from precisely that.

We prepare the bills, put them in front of whoever approves them, and follow through to Final on your billing cycle.

Disbursements recorded against the matter as they are incurred and billed on, in the correct bucket. Cost Recoveries for what the firm absorbs in house, photocopying and postage. Office Payments for money the firm has genuinely paid a third party. Anticipated Payments for a disbursement billed before it has been paid, which is the most misused concept in LEAP and the one that makes a file look more profitable than it is.

Booked wrongly, or never on charged at all, disbursements leak cash with no natural moment at which anybody notices.

The Aged Debtors report run on a rhythm, reminders issued against your firm’s own terms, and the accounts that need your call separated from the ones that need a second email. Payment arrangements recorded on the matter, so the next person to look does not begin again from nothing.

Debtor chasing fails for a predictable reason. It is uncomfortable, it is not billable, and it is the first thing to move when the day fills up. Putting it outside the firm removes the awkwardness along with the delay.

Structured follow up on accounts that have stopped responding to ordinary reminders. A defined sequence rather than a scatter of one off chases, recorded against the matter so the history is there if the account goes further.

Where an account is heading towards write off or formal recovery, it reaches you with the correspondence trail assembled and the position set out, before the decision gets made by default. Nothing should be written off because chasing it fell off the end of somebody’s week.

The first conversation captured in full: who is calling, what they believe their problem is, who else is involved, and how they found you. Recorded against a People Card or an Organisation Card as it happens, rather than on a pad that somebody transcribes later or does not.

An enquiry captured halfway costs twice. Someone rings back for the details that should have been taken the first time, and the client repeats themselves to a firm they have not engaged yet. Intake is the first thing a client experiences and usually the least designed.

Conflict searches run across your existing cards and matters before a file is opened, and identity verification carried out to your firm’s standard, with the evidence recorded against the matter rather than left sitting in somebody’s email.

We run the search and put the result in front of you. Whether a conflict exists, and what happens about it, is a decision for the firm and stays with the firm. What we take away is the step that gets skipped when everyone is busy, which is the one step here that cannot be skipped.

The matter opened against the correct matter type, which sounds like a small decision and is not. LEAP carries more than a thousand pre-configured types by state and area of law, firms cannot create their own, and the one chosen at opening governs the fields, the precedents and the reporting for the life of the file.

Parties recorded against the right table types, so the Other Side’s Solicitor is not sitting where the client should be. Person Responsible and Person Acting set. Your rates applied as the firm has agreed them.

Where file opening sets the record, this sets the working file. Folder structure applied so documents land where the next person will look for them, the precedents for that matter type made available on the file, opening correspondence prepared, and the critical dates diarised from the first day rather than the first crisis.

A file that starts organised tends to stay organised. A file that starts as an empty matter card and a folder on a shared drive never quite recovers, and somebody pays for that later.

Engagement letters prepared from your templates and populated from the matter, so the scope, the parties and the responsible practitioner are right before it goes anywhere. Issued through LawConnect where your firm uses it, so the client reads and signs without printing or scanning anything.

Then chased. An engagement letter sent and never returned is a matter running without agreed terms, and that tends to surface at the least convenient moment available. We track them through to signed and tell you which are still out.

Costs agreements drafted from your firm’s own precedent and populated with the scope, the basis and the estimates exactly as you have settled them, issued to the client, and tracked through to signed, returned and filed against the matter.

The content is yours. Costs disclosure sits with the firm and with the responsible practitioner, and we neither advise on it nor vary it. What we do is make sure the document goes out when the matter opens rather than three weeks in, and that you know the day it has not come back.