Evan Taylor[extern] is a solo Divorce and Family lawyer in Norman, Oklahoma. He represents men and women in family dissolution matters.

He also runs an uncontested divorce service called MicroDivorce.com, which offers a fast and accurate way of handling divorces in which the parties agree on everything but need a lawyer’s help, but without the typical lawyer prices and lawyer created delays.

He is fascinated with the ways that technology can be used to make the practice of the law more fun and create a better service for clients.

What he wanted to do

→ Create detailed records of client needs that could be used later in the actual litigation

→ Create highly-complex document automation based on client and case specific data.

→Join the administrative task of entering time and billing information with the actual case work

What he did

→ Created a database of each client’s request for services based on office’s standard intake procedures

→ Created a full suite of automated documents, emails, and spreadsheets for the entire litigation process

→ Created a task-based billing system that allows for flat fee billing in accordance with ethical standards.

What he accomplished

→ A seamless flow from consult to hiring that is completely staff driven and requires no more attorney meddling

→ Every document is drafted just in time based on the individual case at issue.

→ Automated billing flow that allows staff to handle all time entries and cost updates for all cases in the office.

I meet with hundreds of people every year who are looking for legal services in the family law area. After a initial consultation there may be a lag of several days to several months before I am engaged.

This delay tends to fog the memory, and any notes taken during the consult must be interpreted by not just myself but my staff. I was having to reference my notes in hardcopy or track down PDFs when it came time to start working the case to answer staff questions and determine what tasks needed to be done in each case.

I also had to manually track the case progress and enter billing as certain stages were complete. This was administratively burdensome, and took time away from working on the high level attorney work that I was most qualified to do.

I programmed a series of flows to handle the common tasks from document automation to sending notices to client and others. At each stage of a case, from Hiring to Closing, my staff and I execute a series of tasks based on these scripted flow. These flows pull data from a client’s Scope Plan and the substantive information of their case.

Now client don’t have to wait days for us to assemble and process the information, but now only minutes.

Also, staff is notified every time a billing event should take place and can make sure this is put into our case management software.