The Legal Assistant

Cloud and On-Site based legal practice management software.

A modular design on top of a generic engine provides specific functionality for distinct practice areas of law such as Personal Injury and Real Estate.

Industry

Legal

Services

Business Mobile
App Business Web
Application Product Development

Technologies

Grails
Spring Boot
AWS SAAS

The professionalism and knowledge that Tucanoo and Dave have shown to our law firm in areas of software development, website development/maintenance, SEO development, logistics (from start-up thru striving company), on-boarding new clients, and customer support, has been priceless.
– Gary J. Zalarick Esq. Attorney at Law, NJ, USA

Background

Our client started with a custom database system specifically developed to aid the firm with its day-to-day routines involved in running a busy law firm. Numerous issues were raised, foremost the backend database had reached its “end of life” period with no further support from the original development company. Secondly, the system was no longer compatible with newer versions of the MS Windows operating system which meant the firm was locked into aging hardware and software.

It was clear from the beginning that a full rewrite of the software was necessary, updating the current system was out of the question. The client also wanted to take the system from their in-house solution to a marketable product they could sell to other firms as there was a clear market for such a product.

Solution

We proposed to rewrite the system from scratch, maintaining the workflows present in the legacy system and also the key features that made the original product such a powerful tool for their firm. It was clear we were going to convert the system from a desktop application restricted to Microsoft Windows, to an online web application opening up the software to multiple devices, regardless of the operating system, including mobile devices.

Our developers faced significant development challenges along the way. Users were accustomed to writing documents within Microsoft Word and this posed a significant challenge for a web application to give the same seamless functionality. However, we were able to fulfill this requirement giving the users full integration with MS Word from directly within the browser-based application. There has been no other legal product on the market that offers the same functionality.

Other key features were an absolute requirement such as :

Internal task management. Users must be able to assign and receive tasks with the ability to reply, postpone and follow up.

Audio dictation. As some users like to assign tasks in textual form, many prefer to dictate their instructions and forward these on, again in the form of a task but with audio, recorded directly from their browser.

Event management. The system must be able to determine the state of a case and react dynamically, automating the process of letter generation and notifications to appropriate staff.

Billing and invoicing so the firm can bill their clients and get paid!

Result

Our team not only provided the same database management modules but many enhancements have since been made to the product which now also provides functions such as:

Both On-site and Cloud-based purchase options utilizing Amazon Web Services for the entire SaaS (Software as a Service) infrastructure.

Self-contained Email management, negating the need for users to switch between the app and any other email client.

Incoming Mail rapid case allocation system.

SMS-based notifications to clients.

Automated document indexing to provide a powerful and instant search engine across all case files including all associated documents, both outgoing and incoming.

Comprehensive Subscription and Billing management.

In addition to the development of the software, our team designed the public-facing website and any landing pages, and additionally advised and executed content strategy for marketing through the public-facing website.

Such a significant project requires many third-party services to operate together seamlessly so our team managed every aspect utilizing services such as:

Multiple Amazon Web Services products to provide the infrastructure for all aspects of the architecture, including Cloud Formation, EC2, S3, Route53, Elastic Beanstalk, ACM, Lambda, and others.

Subscription, billing, and payment processing gateways.

Live chat, support ticket, and knowledge base services.

Development source management, CI/CD build lifecycles, and internal ticket and documentation.

A product such as this is an ongoing development since it can forever evolve as there is an endless list of potential new features that can be introduced, either with new modules catering for specific areas of law, or modifications and new features as user’s requirements also evolve. For example a recent feature we introduced to aid with the increase in employees working from home as a result of Covid 19 was integration with Zoom Meetings.

This enabled the firm’s Attorneys to meet online with other staff members and involved parties of a case without having to leave their home to attend the office in person.

Other recent integrations have been with cloud storage providers as many law firms have taken to maintaining their documents online with services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft One Drive.