How Foster Pepper reduced time spent on new business acceptance by 60%

For more than a century, Foster Pepper has been an integral part of the growth of the Pacific Northwest community. With more than 130 attorneys located in Seattle and Spokane, Washington, it has the deep industry knowledge, commitment to client service and a collaborative environment that allow it to provide the best legal and business solutions for its clients.

Innovation in New Business Acceptance

Over the last four years, Foster Pepper PLLC, a leading law firm by Best Lawyers in America, Chambers USA and U.S. News-Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms,” transformed itself through a focus on delivering new services efficiently. Director of Innovation Sean Monahan explains, “Foster Pepper knows we have to completely overhaul the way we do business. Clients expect better, faster, cheaper. We can only achieve this by innovating across the firm.”

Time and time again, Foster Pepper has turned to the Intapp Professional Services Platform to help them meet its innovation goals. Foster Pepper owns Intapp Time, Intapp Conflicts, Intapp Intake, Intapp Walls, Intapp Integrate and Intapp Flow. Monahan explains, “The Intapp Professional Services Platform meets our core innovation requirements around ease of use and agility.”

Over four years ago, Foster Pepper selected Intapp Conflicts and Intapp Intake to complete the move off LegalKEY and to transition to a centralized clearance model. “We believe that with a centralized model, fee earners are more focused on clients and less focused on administrative tasks. Furthermore, our conflict checking is faster and more robust,” suggests Monahan.

Foster Pepper has a significant return on investment on the firm’s deployment of Intapp Conflicts and Intake. The most dramatic result has been around new business acceptance, with the median time to open a new matter reduced by 60%. Time to open a matter is the critical metric for the centralization team. “Our primary target is the velocity of new business acceptance, as it helps us quickly address our client’s needs,” adds Monahan. It is not just the median matter that has been reduced; many matters are opened in less than a day.

A variety of factors drives the reduction a new matter opening. First, the intuitive user interface enables staff, lawyers and the conflicts team to complete tasks efficiently. Next, the flexibility of the business process allows the team to route requests, and handle complicated approvals for things like alternative fee arrangements (AFAs).

The median time for opening a new matter has been reduced by 60%.

SEAN MONAHAN, DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, FOSTER PEPPER

Innovation Beyond New Business Acceptance

Other products within Intapp Professional Services Platform have supported Foster Pepper’s transformation requirements. For instance, Foster Pepper trained business users and analysts to create or modify workflows using Intapp Flow.

Now Foster Pepper uses Intapp Flow to power a variety of processes such as invoice management for clients and will
soon be focused on file closing, Active Directory management, and employee departures. “By shifting the majority of our development to business users, we can respond more quickly to innovation requests from the practice teams,” reports Monahan. “Managing invoices via Intapp Flow helped our teams be much more efficient.” IT still supports the business by focusing on more complex tasks, like coding integrations using Intapp Integrate.

Foster Pepper also uses Intapp Walls for ethical barriers. “Intapp Walls just works. Knowing that our clients and the firm are protected enables the teams to focus on compliance with the expectations of our clients,” adds Monahan.

Foster Pepper initially selected Axiom DTE for its time entry. It is currently upgrading to the latest version of Intapp Time and will be in live in the spring of 2018. “Foster Pepper upgraded to Intapp Time for its mobile and offline synchronization capabilities, as well as passive time capture,” adds Monahan.

Executive Summary

Foster Pepper, an 130-lawyer firm in the Pacific Northwest, turned to the Intapp Professional Services Platform to achieve its innovation goals.

Challenges

  • Use innovation to efficiently compete and differentiate
  • Define a solution addressing people and process – not just technology
  • Critical requirements included a modern interface; ability to re-route or escalate requests easily; ability for business users to create or modify workflows
  • Uncertain future of LegalKEY required a plan to move conflicts clearing process off LegalKEY
  • LegalKEY implementation was too rigid, and unable to meet Foster Pepper innovation requirements
  • Need to move to a centralized clearance model to accelerate process, improve robustness and minimize administrative costs

Results with Intapp

  • Median time it takes to accept new business was reduced by 60% by moving to Intapp Intake and Conflicts using a centralized conflict clearance model
  • The low code nature of Intapp Flow enables business users to create or modify flows
  • IT supports development by creation of more complex items such as system to system integration
  • Intapp Flow powers such workflows as invoice management for clients, file closing, Active Directory management, and employee departures

By shifting the majority of our development to business users, we can respond more quickly to innovation requests from the practice teams.

SEAN MONAHAN, DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, FOSTER PEPPER