Law.com Subscribers SAVE 30%
Call 855-808-4530 or email [email protected] to receive your discount on a new subscription.
Practically Applying Business Intelligence
With more than 38,000 open matters at any given time, summarizing and analyzing practice, client and attorney information was nearly impossible to do efficiently using manual process and flat reporting. We did our best to create reports (eg, work in process (WIP), realization (amount collected as compared against amount worked/billed) and performance) using available technologies, including our time and billing system (Elite), Excel, Access and custom reports. However, we were eager to find a way to conduct more sophisticated analysis. We knew the questions that we wanted answered, but had been unable to get at the information in a usable format. For example, we could get general reports about aging accounts receivable (A/R), but we weren't able to assess real performance as it related to each client's historic payment pattern. If our firm averages a 75-day turn around on receivables and Client A has invoices 60 days old and Client B's are 90-days out, is that good or bad? We needed more detail than we could get from our transaction-based systems in order to answer these types of questions.
We decided it was time to implement reporting-based business intelligence (BI) software. Essentially, BI software sorts through vast amounts of firm data (from disparate sources such as time and billing, general ledger, payroll, etc.), automating the number crunching and analysis to provide us with actionable information and a more focused approach to following up on that information. Over a 1-year period, we reviewed software and services from four vendors, including our accounting system vendor and third party providers.
We selected Redwood Analytics because they are business and finance professionals that specialize in developing data warehouses and analytic cubes (note: defined below) specific to law firm performance. Once developed, Redwood's application provides a multi-dimensional analytic platform (Cognos) to generate reports. What the analytic cubes do is take information into the data warehouse and reorganize it in order to answer a specific analytic question (eg, Which practice group is most profitable?), the information is then presented in a way that can be readily manipulated by the end-user. As such, the end-user can easily analyze, slice and dice, look at cross sections and create reports from the data without having to understand query language or how to join database tables.
Major Differences In UK, U.S. Copyright Laws
This article highlights how copyright law in the United Kingdom differs from U.S. copyright law, and points out differences that may be crucial to entertainment and media businesses familiar with U.S law that are interested in operating in the United Kingdom or under UK law. The article also briefly addresses contrasts in UK and U.S. trademark law.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin
With each successive large-scale cyber attack, it is slowly becoming clear that ransomware attacks are targeting the critical infrastructure of the most powerful country on the planet. Understanding the strategy, and tactics of our opponents, as well as the strategy and the tactics we implement as a response are vital to victory.
The Article 8 Opt In
The Article 8 opt-in election adds an additional layer of complexity to the already labyrinthine rules governing perfection of security interests under the UCC. A lender that is unaware of the nuances created by the opt in (may find its security interest vulnerable to being primed by another party that has taken steps to perfect in a superior manner under the circumstances.
Removing Restrictive Covenants In New York
In Rockwell v. Despart, the New York Supreme Court, Third Department, recently revisited a recurring question: When may a landowner seek judicial removal of a covenant restricting use of her land?