The MasterList

Pop Quiz

How are you keeping up with the onslaught of issues and developments in all your cases?

Take this Pop Quiz to see where you rate as a master case manager.

1. My case planning routine can best be described as:

___ A. Enter events and deadlines in a hard calendar. Create ticklers using post-its. Set aside documents on desk or credenza for later review.
___ B. Enter events and deadlines in Palm or in PIM calendar that came with firm's enterprise software suite. Post-its for ticklers. Document stacks to be reviewed.
___ C. Use a case management program that lays out the entire case plan at a glance at a single master screen shared by everyone on the case. This master screen shows all events, deadlines, key tasks, prep work and follow-up plans. For each case, this same screen has all contact information, and full text notepads where you can keep research memos, deposition outlines, trial note books, and evidence development logs. This master screen is collaborative. Not only can we see each other's work in the context of a unified case plan, we can even communicate with each other and share ideas about the case across the same screen interface. Best of all, our case management system helps me clear anything that crosses my desk in less than 2 minutes - unless I want to handle it right now. The system is 100% accountable for getting alerts back to me for timely handling that will appear just when I ask them to, with accurate notes as to what my tactical impressions were the last time I reviewed any noted situation.

2. When I get hit with a new piece of information in a case that has the potential of requiring a tactical decision, I tend to:

___ A. Drop everything and handle it immediately. Push everything else on the desk aside. Mobilize the staff. Full steam ahead until something else comes up or I remember what it was I was doing in the first place.
___ B. Forgettaboutit. File it to the hard file. Rely on brilliant instincts to handle it if it ever crops up again.
___ C. Take a moment to assess my thoughts about it and to sketch the outlines of a plan for handling it later. Pull up the master planning screen for this case in our case management program. Set a date for a follow-up alert with a description of my ideas and plans. Or, make a collaborative assignment through the same master screen to one of my associates to do the review and to recommend a decision. With our case management system I am back to what I should be working on within minutes, with the new situation completely in control.

3. I collaborate with other staff members on a case by:

___ A. Dialing into their office to discuss what's on my mind. Dictating a memo to my secretary for distribution. For big issues, instruct my secretary to set a staff meeting and to arrange for a conference room.
___ B. Forgettaboutit. My staff is the best educated, best trained, most experienced in the business. All assignments get done on time as directed with no bad outcomes.
We're all brilliant soloists. That's why we work together so well.
___ C. By going to the master planning screen of our case management program, I can see the entire context of any case at a glance and know what is going on with everybody in terms of prep, planning, implementation, and follow-up. If it's worth tracking, our case management program easily sets the wheels in motion to track it and tells us who is accountable for what and when. If I want to communicate with any staff member about any aspect of the case or make a directive or float an idea, I simply open a task description entry with a single keystroke and lay out my concept. Highlighting my colleague's user i.d. code instructs the database to send an alert to their workstation. With our case management system, tactical ideas about cases travel between desktops in nanoseconds with alerts that provide complete accountability for handling and feedback.

4. When I am going crazy to find out what happened in a case with respect to a deposition or hearing outcome, the status of research I need for a motion I am finalizing right now, or to find out why my client called yelling and screaming about something he was told by an associate, a typical response on my part would be to:

___ A. Track down the responsible associate with mad dogs if necessary and get them on the carpet in my office or in phone contact immediately. In the meantime, assign a paralegal to tear through the hard file.
___ B. Forgettabout it. My staff is the best. The research will be there tomorrow and I won't really need to review it before I file the motion. The client can't be right. Before this case is over, everything will gel in one magic moment and we will all have a good laugh about some of the hairier moments we went through.
___ C. I have a great case management program with a simple intuitive interface and a usage convention that my staff subscribes to. Chances are if I enter the case master screen, the follow-up on the depo or hearing is there in a memo; the research in progress for the motion is in a notepad log where I can read it, revise it, spellcheck it, and cut and paste it directly into the brief right now if I wanted to; and, I can handle the client because within 1 second of his call I am at the master planning screen and everything the client and I need to know in terms of planning, implementation, and follow-up is all posted there as the basis for a commanding discussion of the case by me. I look brilliant.

5. To me, "Case Management" means:

___ A. Doing things the way I have always done them, relying on instinct and experience to juggle all the balls and keep the fat out of the fire.
___ B. Having a loyal staff that is always professionally attired and will eat dirt on demand, providing an expensively decorated lobby to impress my clients, and purchasing useful technology for my staff such as word processing with spellchecker, a computer network, and law office enterprise software that helps answer the phone, helps produce and keep track of documents for secretaries, and does all our billing and accounting.
___ C. Applying my mind to the content of my case. Deciding what to do, when to do it, and by whom. Managing a constant flow of crises and tactical forks in the road by crafting an equally constant stream of decisions designed to surmount the issues. Implementing those decisions and providing accountability by defining assignments for staff with reasonable target dates and benchmarks that allow for balancing competing assignments in other equally complex cases. And, inexorably tracking what we have initiated to make sure that it gets done on time, effectively, as planned.

6. To me, "Case Management Software" means:

___ A. Software that substitutes a computer calendar for my hard calendar and a computer Rolodex for my hard Rolodex, but otherwise stays out of the way and lets me do things the way I have always done them.
___ B. Law office enterprise software with lots of bells, whistles, icons and folders that is too complex for me to figure out, but helps my staff create pleading captions, answers the phone, and does some accounting and other stuff I really don't know about. But, that's ok, because as long as it helps my staff run the back office smoothly, I'm freed up to manage my cases the way I have always done.
___ C. A case management program should be simple and easy to use. To me, a case management system should focus on managing cases the way I have always done. It should be intuitive and have screen flow that acts like I think, matching my tactical thought processes smoothly. It should make me forget that I am no longer in Kansas with pen and paper. It should make me feel like Oz is OK. It should make me feel like I invented it because it works the way I think about cases.

7. If I had to name a system that fits all the answer C's above, what would I call it?

___ A. Pie in the sky.
___ B. Nothing much. If it doesn't help my secretary with phones, pleadings, and accounting what good is it? She makes all the decisions around here anyway.
___ C. The MasterList.

Thank you for taking this Pop Quiz. The correct answer really is The MasterList. The MasterList system is not theory. It is practice. And, it works exactly as described above. Why not email us or give us a call for a free demo to see how The MasterList will put you in command of the content of your cases.

Bill Neubert
The MasterList

White Paper: Pop Quiz
July, 2000

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