Case Study - Scottish Legal Complaints Commission
Customer
The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC) was established by The Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 2007. Based in Edinburgh, the SLCC is a ’one stop shop’ for complaints about legal practitioners in Scotland. Within its remit the Commission also handles other types of cases including enquiries (approx. 5-7,000 per annum) and FOI requests.
Business Issues
As a new body, there were considerable challenges including the appointment of new staff, redeployment of staff from the existing Law Society of Scotland, ’kitting out’ of new premises, designing new business processes and getting to grips with their new legislation.
In addition, the organisation had no internal IT department to plan and project manage their required case management system and had decided to use a managed services facility (Scots Lite), provided by the Scottish Government, to host their chosen solution.
CAS Solution
The SLCC chose a Workpro Case Management solution from CAS. With considerable expertise gained from implementing solutions for similar organisations throughout the UK, CAS has been able to support the SLCC through to a successful implementation.
Staff at CAS worked closely with the Scottish Government to ensure the smooth installation of Workpro on its managed servers. This was the first priority at a time when staff had not yet been hired and a test server was required to allow the tailoring of Workpro to the particular needs of the SLCC.
Once staff came on board, they were closely involved during the prototype customisation period to ensure:
- the database was designed to reflect their needs (particularly for performance reporting)
- the workflow of the case management system matched their new business processes
- management reports were designed to provide the new senior management team with the tools they required to run the business.
Benefits
Staff at the SLCC have embraced this new technology at the challenging start up phase of the organisation. Having a tried and tested product has allowed them to get up-to-speed exceptionally quickly, enabling staff to be productive earlier than expected. In addition, CAS experience and knowledge of best practices for case management allowed it to rapidly provide a tailored version of Workpro which mirrored the SLCC’s new business processes. This ensured that all staff followed consistent processes when working on an enquiry, complaint or investigation from the start.
The system has been tailored to the particular needs of the SLCC, while its flexible design ensures its adaptability in the future to meet the changing business environment of the SLCC as the organisation grows from inception to maturity.
Richard Smith, Interim Chief Executive, SLCC adds We chose Workpro for the SLCC because the CAS solution best matched our need for an investigator-orientated system that would support and enhance our processes. We knew CAS had an expertise in investigative management systems but they also demonstrated an understanding of the particular challenges of working in the field of legal services. Workpro is a functionality rich solution, it was competitively priced and it allowed us to demonstrate best value."
