All case management programs perform the same basic tasks of managing individual and firm wide calendars, tracking tasks and to-do items, serving as a firm wide contact list and giving firms a place to track and manage activities for their clients' cases.

Choosing a case management product is a very personal decision. While they may perform the same functions, they do them differently. It also is important not to focus exclusively on your firm's immediate needs. Converting when you outgrow a product can be a costly process.

Imagine your firm in a year or two once the basic tasks have been implemented and try to picture what other functions you might want. Make sure the product you select can grow with your needs. For example, suppose you began as a sole practitioner and recently added an associate. Suddenly, you have another person's calendar to manage. Your immediate need would be for a program to allow each of you to monitor your own calendar and tasks while being able to see when both of you are available for meetings. If you focused only on the calendar component, you might become frustrated when you weren't able to incorporate e-mails from clients into case records or create and manage documents effectively. In selecting a case management program, the most-important task is matching your firm's current and anticipated needs with the capabilities of each product.

Versions

Time Matters 3.0, the current version, is the progeny of a 10-year development by Data.txt Corp. (800-328-2898, www.timematters.com). It began when WordPerfect for DOS was in its heyday. The early DOS versions even used many of the same keystrokes as WordPerfect. Over the past decade, the program has matured into a rich, highly customized case management tool. In addition to the Personal (single user) version, the company sells the Professional version ($350 for the server/first user and $150 per additional user) and the Enterprise version, a client/server version running on Microsoft's SQL Server 7.0 ($1,000 for server license and $400 for each additional user).

For firms using Microsoft's Small Business Server or running an SQL program such as PC DOCS Open or Imanage for document management, Elite or another high-end billing program, the SQL version will be the preferred choice, although larger firms may want a separate server for each SQL product. At a recent training session, a vendor showed a non-indexed text search (meaning the information in the field being sought had not been designated as a frequently used or key word search field) done on a database with 50,000 open matters in the Professional version. It took about 4½ minutes. The same data in the Enterprise version took a mere 4 seconds!

While the temptation would be to purchase the SQL version for this reason alone, there are some other benefits of the SQL version. Time Matters' Enterprise version is written specifically to work with Microsoft's SQL Server product and will not, at this time, run with other SQL databases such as Oracle. SQL, by design, is more complicated but a more stable means of storing large quantities of data. However, be careful because the SQL version will not improve performance in every function of the program.

The current version, Time Matters 3.0 (with service release 2.0 now available), consists of four main data lists and four supporting record types. Contacts are the people you deal with such as clients, adversaries and witnesses. Cases or matters represent the work you're doing for each client. Unlike other case management programs, Time Matters does not require setting up matters for each client. While matters or projects can be a handy way to classify work for clients, this option is very helpful for transactional practices.

By design, Time Matters lets you connect many people to a single case or a single person to multiple cases or any combination. This is ideal for litigation practices that can have a class action or complex case with many parties or need to be able to see which case is being handled before a particular judge or with a particular insurance company adjuster. Version 3 adds a relationship code that allows you to classify the connection between a person and a specific case. For example, in one instance, a person could be the opposing counsel and in another situation might be co-counsel.

Enhancements

Some of my favorite program enhancements are the form styles, triggers, inclusion of Internet and internal e-mail, and the messenger.

Form styles are screen customizations connected to the classification codes. For instance, you can set up a classification code for each type of case handled and have the fields on the matter screen change based on the type of case. For criminal cases, you might identify plaintiff and defendant while a bankruptcy case's main contacts are debtor and creditor.

As was the case in the previous version, you can easily change the characteristics of fields and choose from formats such as date, drop-down lists that you define, phone fields, etc. New to Version 3 are linked fields where information can be connected from other parts of the program, making it possible to show the docket number and matter number from the case record on the events screen.

Triggers are Time Matters' answer to Amicus' "do" button. Triggers make something happen when the criteria used to create them occur. For example, you could define a trigger to automatically add a new case record when a contact record is changed from a prospect code to a client code. Similarly, you could have a to-do reminder to follow up correspondence created the week or two before.

For several years, I have copied and pasted text from client-related e-mail into the notes area in my case and contact screens. Version 3 has simplified my life by letting me create and manage Internet e-mail directly within Time Matters. Version 3 supports both MAPI and POP3 e-mail. With this version, I can create e-mail messages connected to my contact or case records and when I receive replies, attach them to the appropriate case. This, along with features like the Timeline view, provides a full case chronology at my fingertips.

Appointments

The events and to-do records manage appointments that are both date- and time-sensitive and tasks or reminders due on a specific day but not at a particular time. The events and to-do's can be viewed in either lists or on calendar views. The program comes with a daily, weekly and monthly view, but you can add your own views such as five days at a glance. Both the printed and screen versions provide tremendous flexibility in terms of which fields from the events or to-do screens you wish to see or print. Every record type can be displayed in a list from which to choose your own columns from the underlying records.

Version 3 enhances this feature by allowing you to click on any of the displayed labels at the top of a list and have the program sort the displayed list in that order. For example, normally you might have your event list displayed chronologically by date and time. Clicking on the staff column would enable you to see all Connie's events before Joe's and Ron's.

If this is a frequent search, you could design either program-level or user-level quick tabs. These are a combination of a set of columns along with a search criteria that can be saved and chosen by clicking on the tab. For example, in your matters list, you might divide your cases by type or by which attorney is handling them. Version 3 adds program-level quick tabs that can be available to everyone in addition to the user-level tabs that can be copied from person to person. For frequent searches, quick tabs can also be indexed to speed searches.

In addition to the four main record types, Version 3 has added new supporting record types with enhanced capabilities. Version 3 separates the two types of note records into free-form notes and custom (formerly Dataxt) notes that are structured and can be used to supplement the three screens of fields available for each contact and case. For example, some of my clients are using these to record information they formerly tracked during intake interviews. This will allow the attorneys to view the file without pulling the redwell from the filing cabinet. There now are e-mail, physical mail and web records with their own lists that can be associated with contacts and/or cases.

Integration

One of the legacies of Time Matters during the reign of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS is its strong document creation and management features. To me, the ability to use the components of information stored within your case management program to produce word processing documents is one of the major benefits of implementing a case management product. Time Matters provides more choices for document creation than its competitors. You can create merge documents pulling information from different parts of Time Matters into several different versions of Corel WordPerfect and Microsoft Word as well as assembling documents with Capsoft's Hot Docs.

In addition, Time Matters has a unique document creation tool called the formattable clipboard. You can define up to five pages of text pulling in fields from the different record types along with fonts and formatting. These clipboards then can be used with either Word or WordPerfect and used for multiple records or attached on the document list along with merged documents, existing documents, faxes and scanned files.

One aspect of document management that sets Time Matters apart from the other products is the new auto name feature. This enables you to define your own folder and file naming structure, and have Time Matters automatically name and store documents based on that criteria. While I would like to have more choices for naming schemes, I'm sure there will be more options in the next upgrade. For smaller firms not yet ready to spend $400 or more per user to purchase Worldox, PC DOCS OPEN or Imanage, this feature alone may justify the purchase price.

Related records

Much of the power of the program lies in its related records concept, allowing you to connect the different components to one another and view the relationships from many different views within the program. For example, a phone message to a client regarding her case could be seen in the phone list, under her contact record or under her case record. Another important feature is the ability to audit data entry activities to ensure reliability.

Time Matters was one of the first case management programs to develop a two-way link to Timeslips and now also boasts links to PCLaw Jr. and Tabs. Rumor has it the next maintenance release will improve some of these links as well as adding links to other billing programs and possibly Worldox for even better document management. Time Matters syncs with the Palm Pilot while other products must go from the case management program to the Palm Desktop software and then to the Palm and back through the Palm Desktop. Time Matters also incorporated a way to connect the case to events and to-do's that makes the Palm Pilot a much more useful tool for busy attorneys.

Phone features

Version 2 of Time Matters allowed you to record incoming telephone messages and connect them to contacts or cases. It also included a notify feature to let an attorney know someone had called or was on the telephone while the lawyer was in a meeting or on a conference call.

The phone feature has been enhanced and an entirely new internal messenger system introduced. All the form entry screens now include an option to show a notify section that allows you to send an internal message through Time Matters or by e-mail to someone else in the firm. This message feature can be used to simply send messages around the firm or to attach messages to specific form screens. For example, in addition to taking a phone message that I'll access when I see my alerts or review my unread phone messages, my assistant also can notify me about the phone call through the messenger option. Depending on how it's configured, it can pop onto my computer screen with a sound and I can double click on the message to see the underlying phone record, event screen or whatever is attached to it.

Conflicts

Many firms seek to implement programs like Time Matters to manage possible conflicts of interest. The global search feature lets you look through both active and archived records for parts of client names. Archiving past events, completed to-do's, phone calls or other records is easy. You can search for the records you wish to archive or process, tag them, choose process and archive them. The archived records are easily accessible and can be searched or included in the related records screens. High-volume firms can periodically perform batch archiving. One of the hidden strengths of Time Matters is its ability to let you easily work with large numbers of records - whether archiving, merging or exporting - and share the information with other programs.

As their competitors like to point out, all this customization and flexibility comes with a price tag. While you can easily start using Time Matters without a consultant, training or customization, you'll grow into using more of the program and using it more effectively with an upfront investment in setup and training. Too often, attorneys will look at the graphic screens of Amicus and conclude it will be easier to learn. In my experience, however, this philosophy does a disservice to the commitment required to successfully benefit from a case management system. A quick start often means your firm will invest in learning only the first 10 percent of the program's features to meet its most dire needs. Learning the basic functions of a case management program is not the same as using it to manage the many aspects of your practice.

Implementation

When I first saw the new version, even I was slightly overwhelmed by the new tabs for each record and the large number of new choices for customizing and manipulating the program to meet my particular needs. However, once I got over the initial learning curve, I found it's wise to implement new features gradually. One option is to hide features you don't think you'll use for a while. When I begin training with clients, I often ask if they would like to turn off any features such as tracking physical mail or websites. Almost universally, the reaction is, "We'd like to use that at some point." I had assumed the website tracking feature would be one of the last aspects to implement until a matrimonial practitioner, thinking it was unrelated to implementing Time Matters, mentioned he often checks out his clients' spouses employers and other background information and didn't know where to keep track of those searches.

One of the best aspects of the program is the quality of the programming and support behind the product. The people at Datatxt have a 10-year track record and a slightly different business model from other software companies. Giants like Microsoft have been accused (and not just by the Justice Department) of producing bug-filled products and then selling technical support and new versions that fix the problems. The principals of Time Matters believe technical support can be kept less expensive by producing more-reliable software. It's one of the few companies I've ever encountered that regularly adds new features in its maintenance releases and makes them available free over the Internet.

Commitment

Implementing a program as comprehensive as Time Matters takes a big commitment. You'll quickly find your focus will change from spending time on your computer doing Internet research, answering e-mail, recording billable time or drafting documents to spending the bulk of your time in Time Matters and going to those other applications as you work through your phone calls, appointments and to-do items. Over time, the benefit of taking those extra few minutes to get complete information from prospective clients pays off when someone calls and I can quickly determine that I spoke with his partner two years ago and he doesn't have to spend time repeating information I already have. It makes quite an impression!

The payoff comes when you're able to provide better service to your clients, make sure their work is done promptly and rest easier at night knowing your practice is under control. Regardless of which case management system you choose, make a commitment to work with it as completely as possible. The reward will come when you look back after a year and can't imagine managing your practice without it.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems, a Montclair-based training and consulting firm assisting small- and medium-sized law firms with technology. She formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA's Law Practice Management Section and is an author of The Lawyer's Guide to Timeslips, published by the ABA. She can be reached at carol@losinc.com.

Questions for Carol L. Schlein on law office technology may be faxed to New Jersey Lawyer at (732) 650-7010 or mailed to "Law Technology Questions," New Jersey Lawyer, Edison Square, 2035 Lincoln Highway, Suite 3005, Edison, N.J. 08817.