SAGA PRACTICE MANAGER™
Case Management Software for the Subrogation Practice
Saga Practice Manager ™ brings all the elements of your practice under one roof, and makes them work in sync.
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¨ Calendar ¨ Automatic Scheduling |
¨ Notes ¨ Reports |
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¨ Address Book ¨ Message Center ¨ Case Management |
¨ Time, Billing, Settlement & Payment ¨ Conflict Search ¨ Customization ¨ Marketing |
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¨ Document Management ¨ Document Assembly
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¨ Integration ¨ Security |
Get better organized, make everyone more efficient, eliminate duplication, increase client satisfaction and move a matter from start to finish in half the time and get peace of mind.
Image 1 – weekly calendar
Saga Practice Manager’s ™ office-wide calendar tracks every activity, even those unrelated to your cases/matters. Conferences, hearings, depositions, trial dates, pleadings, letters, discovery schedules, appointments, tasks, phone calls and more are all tracked. An activity can be manually scheduled, or automatically scheduled by the system, using Rule Based Scheduling and Workflow Plans. Calendar activities related to a case/matter can also be viewed and edited from within the matter. This gives you a very quick way to ascertain the status of a case.
Each calendar item can be set to trigger reminders and alarms in advance. A reminder can appear days, weeks, or months in advance and appears on your calendar under ‘ticklers’. The Calendar view is divided visually into critical deadlines, ticklers, tasks and appointments.
Image 2 – daily calendar
Calendar views are customizable so anyone in the firm can view their own calendar, another’s or everyone’s, depending on their access rights. You may see a calendar for a day, week, or month, or any date range you choose. The calendar filters allow you to narrow the display of activities by category. Say you want to see depositions for the next two weeks. Or just discovery items in the coming month. The system allows you to define and create your own filters and queries, save them, and use them over and over again. Filters, queries, and calendar views can be user-specific to the creator or shared by everyone in the firm.
Reschedule an appointment with one click. The system moves the rescheduled activity to its new date and creates an audit trail. If a deposition is repeatedly adjourned by your adversary, the audit trail provides the basis for a motion to compel discovery.
A unique feature of Saga Practice Manager ™ is the ability to view all calendar and diary activity records you have assigned. This way, you can easily find out what’s been completed, and identify anyone not doing his or her job.
Image 3 – a case plan
Saga Practice Manager ™ features the most powerful rule based scheduling features available.
This powerful tool can be applied to other activities such as scheduling depositions and other court related dates: you enter a deposition date into the calendar. This date will automatically trigger a slew of activities, which will be executed and automatically entered into the calendar. The system automatically schedules the following items to take place before the deposition date: Ordering a court reporter; notifying the client of the deposition date and time; confirming the deposition with all parties; assigning an attorney to take the depositions; and preparing for deposition.
Any scheduled task can be tied to an action, such as sending email, writing a letter, making a phone call, etc. Those actions will automatically be executed on their due date, pending your approval. In our deposition scenario, the system will automatically generate a letter to the client advising him of the deposition date, will email the attorney assigned to take the deposition, and will place all the other activities on the calendar. All this is achieved by entering one date into the calendar. Rule based scheduling allows you to tailor the system to the way you practice, and to multiple jurisdictions and practice areas. Using rule based scheduling; you can create workflow plans, which will automatically bring up the next items to be done on a matter. An unlimited number of workflow plans can be created for all types of matters, and be used over and over again. You can create a workflow plan for a subrogation matter in a particular jurisdiction, a real estate matter, a contract matter, a matrimonial matter, etc.
Each staff member in your office can see his or her to-do list for any given day. She can view & print her calendar, task list and ticklers and, optionally, the same items for another person at the same time, for a day, week or two weeks at a time, and to view and access a list of all matters and items that she has worked on during the selected period.
Image 6 – Address Book
Saga Practice Manager ™ centralizes the address & phone book of your entire firm. Throw away your rolodex -- Saga’s address book is all you need. It allows you to create unlimited categories for classifying people & companies in your address book. You can easily look for expert witnesses by specialty, and while you have the expert on screen, find out in which of your cases he/she appeared in the past. You can record unlimited addresses and phone numbers per person: home, office, mailing, and vacation – every address you need is at your fingertips. Track all phone numbers: cellular, pager, home, and office, as many as you need.
Searching for a particular person in your address book is a breeze. Powerful searches allow you to find and sort a record by any field in the address book.
Just click on the phone number and the system will do the dialing for you. Click on an email address and send email. Click on a world wide web address, and the system takes you there.
You can attach an address record to as many mailing lists as you wish: Christmas, Hanukah, birthday etc.
Unlimited space to type notes. Jot down an adjuster’s birthday or the teams he likes. Summarize an expert’s C.V., a judge’s rules, or anything else you might find important.
An additional tab includes information such as date of birth, hobbies, nationality, language, and social security number. These will help gather information for marketing purposes.
Create unlimited custom tabs and fields for a person. Create a tab for additional information or prospective information. Use that information later on in reports. Custom fields & tabs are dependent on the entity’s class. In this way, your custom fields & tabs for an expert witness will be different from those for a judge.
Whether you are looking at an address book record, or anywhere in the system, one click on a name will take you to all the items related to that person: Find all cases/matters you have ever had with him/her, all documents sent or received, all calendar records, all notes, all email. Before you telephone someone you can see a complete history of your relationship. Before you call an adjuster, opposing counsel or anyone else, get an overview and take care of more than one issue in one phone call.
Image 7 – related items
Since Saga Practice Manager ™ is a fully relational database-- an entity entered directly into the address book, or through a matter, is entered only once. Whenever you use this entity its address and phone information will be there. With one click the system creates a relationship between the record in the address book and the matter, and all the information becomes available from within the matter. This powerful feature has another benefit: If an address changes, say an insurance company moves, change it once in the address book and the change will be reflected in any matter involving this insurer.
Conflict searches are instantaneous. Before you take a new matter, type in the name of the prospective party, and you will see a list of all matters in which this party has appeared in the past, and what their role was. It’s Saga Practice Manager ™ relational database which allows this thorough and reliable search.
Image 8 – Case Listing. You may find a case on the list by searching any column on it. There are more columns than the image shows. To search for a case by claim number for example, double click on the Claim number column header and type the claim number you are looking for.
Saga Practice Manager ™ stores all relevant information on a case in the matter file. Once a case is selected from the above case list the program opens the case details as seen in image 9 on the next page.
Image 9 – case information
The above screen gives general information about the case.
Clients, Statute of Limitation, notes, Jurisdiction, case type and case status.
The left margins of the screen contain a navigation bar. A click takes you to
any one of those screens.
Everything that has happened on a matter is viewed on one screen. Check the status of a matter in seconds: Critical deadlines, what was done or is still outstanding, notes & phone calls, documents received and sent, case milestones and progression, settlement negotiations, and more. Activities can be sorted in various ways: chronologically, by activity type, activity status, etc. When your clients ask about the status of their case, you are one click away from giving them an answer. No more “let me find your file, can I call you back later?” and “who has that file?” that normally follows. Think about a paperless desk, where all the relevant information about a case is at your fingertips. Those piles of files on your desk and on the floor are a thing of the past.
Saga Practice Manager gives you the ability to customize your own checklist templates to automatically process a case. Using this feature, the system automatically creates a flow chart of the tasks that need to be completed in order to process a case from start to finish, (including contingencies), assigns tasks to different staff members and executes some of those tasks automatically by generating various documents. Example, the flowchart of processing a case from start to finish may contain the following items:
1) Send first letter to client
2) Send acknowledgement letter to the insured
3) Send claim letter to Defendant
4) Receive response from defendant
5) Did case settle? Y/N. If No
a. Prepare Summons & Complaint
b. File & Serve Summons & Complaint
c. Send bill to client with a copy of summons & complaint
d. Receive answer
e. Respond to Defendant Answer & Bill of Particulars
f. Put case on court calendar
g. Send bill to client
h. Receive Notice of Trial
i. Notify client of trial date
j. Trial
k. Award\Settlement
l. Send release to client
m. Get release back from client
n. Send signed release to adverse carrier
o. Stip of discontinuance
p. First Settlement check received
q. Payment schedule
r. Send final bill to carrier
The flow chart is connected to Saga’s powerful document assembly program. Together, they process a case quickly and efficiently. For example, once the flowchart is entered, the program starts processing it and if an item on the chart relates to generating a document, the program can automatically generate it using its library of form templates. In the example above, the program will automatically generate the first 3 letters items 1-3 on the above list and wait for a response from the defendant. Should you decide to start a law suit; the program will automatically process items 5.a. & c. above and wait for an answer. And so on until the case is settled and closed
Saga Practice Manager features a powerful document assembly program. The program automatically assembles any legal document you desire, from a simple letter to motions and pleadings. It intelligently reads the relevant data from your case/matter and uses it to assemble those documents. No more cut & paste and fill-in the blanks. The idea is that information related to a matter is entered only once, into the matter file. The system then uses that information over and over again to assemble all your documents.
Unlike other programs, Saga Practice Manager™ document assembly is designed specifically for attorneys, and as such has some very important features. For example, your pleadings will automatically incorporate a service list with all the parties and/or their counsel’s names and addresses. Likewise, the cc: in your letters allows you to select who get copies on the fly, from a pop-up list, or have the system select them for you. Special merge codes create tables of property damage & bodily injury claim, expenses & billings. Not only that, but the system will automatically outline all new work done on a file for status letters to your client.
If your practice covers multiple areas of law, you may need practice-specific fields & screens. Saga has already created custom specific screens for various matter/case types. In addition, you may create new screens and populate them with custom fields using Saga’s Screen Designer, or modify Saga’s custom screens. Those fields can be anything: dates, text, names, yes/no checkboxes, notes, etc. Your new customized screen will appear only when needed. Customized screens for an asbestos case will not appear on an auto case. The information entered in those new screens can now be merged into any document in document assembly.
Saga Practice Manager comes with a library of custom firms for the subrogation practice -forms you can use in document assembly. They range from simple letters to pleadings. All those forms are designed in your word processor, MS Word or WordPerfect, and you can easily modify them to fit your needs. You can also add your own forms to the system. Open a form on screen and use a pop-up list to drop in fields you want merged into the document. You now have your own form ready to be used in document assembly. A library of those forms is available for various states and practice areas.
Image 11 – Document Manager
In the practice of law we push a lot of paper. Finding your way quickly in the paper trail is crucial to your success, and a great time saver. Saga Practice Manager ™ puts all the documents at your fingertips. You can review the profiles of all incoming/outgoing documents on a matter very quickly. Want to review a letter you sent to opposing counsel 3 months ago? One click and it is on screen. Review the reply? Another click. Search for all discovery documents? Use a quick filter and the list pops up immediately on screen. Utilizing Saga’s powerful full text search, you can quickly find a document by searching for a phrase or a combination of words in the body of the document.
Using a scanner, you can also scan all incoming documents and seamlessly drop them into the matter. Scan expert opinions, pleadings, letters, police reports, pictures, diagrams, anything you find material to the case. How sweet it is not to have to wade through a 10 inch high file to find a one page letter.
What information would you like the list of documents to show you? It is totally up to you. Do you want the document date to be the first column on the list, or perhaps the document class? Your viewing options, like all other listings in practice manager, are totally customizable.
The negotiation file presents all you need to know about the matter before and during negotiating. The negotiation log contains all prior communication with opposing parties, your demand, their offer, the final settlement sum as well as notes & expenses. After a settlement has been reached, the system tracks the payment schedule and flags all outstanding payments on one case or all your cases.
Image 12 - Award / Settlement screen. Tracks settlement and payment schedule.
Any activity may be related to one or more parties on a matter. The relationship is automatically assigned by the system, using its own rules, which you may modify. This comes in handy in mapping out the status of filings & discovery. With a click of the mouse you can see what you served and what’s outstanding.
Saga Practice Manager ™ features over 80 different reports commonly used by attorneys. Some reports are practice area specific, others, like calendar printouts, are applicable to all areas of law. Get a printout of the office-wide calendar in various formats, a case summary, identify cases on which no progress has been made, see case distribution among your staff, get financial information, settlement, billing, office expenses. Print a list of all the cases you have with any one insurer, and lots more. Using Saga’s built-in report writer, you can create your own custom reports in addition to those provided by Saga.
You may wonder how long it takes to enter the basic data in a matter. We thought about that too – our goal is to save time, not to create more work. Saga Practice Manager ™ has a very unique feature called a Case Intake Wizard. This sophisticated yet intuitive tool makes data entry a breeze. Tables and automatic functions fill out many parts of the intake process automatically.
Your current client base is the best place to start targeting your marketing efforts. Use the demographic and other data stored for each of your clients to plan your marketing campaigns.
Every person in your address book can be attached to one or more mailing lists. Send announcements to your clients, newsletters, holiday and birthday cards. Keep in touch with the people who can bring you more business.
Saga Practice Manager™ will make your entire office more efficient. This will impress everyone, from your clients to opposing counsel. You will gain their respect by just doing what you do, only better. Your clients’ appreciation will bring you more referrals. The respect of your adversaries will put you in a higher league.
You may add screens to the program to fit the needs of other practice areas such as Real Estate, Matrimonial, Criminal & many more.
Field labels on screens can be changed by you.
You can create your own screens using the screen designer, and put any fields you want on those screens. These screens are integrated into the program as seamlessly as native screens. Screens are practice area dependent.
Create your own templates to speed up data entry on the calendar, in notes, in the document manager, in time slips & email.
Teach the system how you practice and it will automate it for you. Case plans automatically create calendar entries, generate documents, send email, and create time slips based on your own rules.
Make the system function the way you want. Set your preferences—open calendar on system entry, set filters for different listings, insert your hourly rate into your time slip, and many other settings.
Today’s typical law office may use various software packages for a variety of tasks. From word processors to accounting and calendars, integration between Saga and these software packages is the key to your success. Saga allows you to capitalize on your investment, and it automatically integrates with a variety of market standard software applications. Saga ties all these applications into one office suite.
Saga Practice Manager™ document assembly seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Word 95, Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2003, WordPerfect 7, WordPerfect 8, WordPerfect 2000 (9), Wordperfect 11, 12 and 13.
QuickBooks
Write a check in QuickBooks, pertaining to an expense on a case, such as filling fees, and see that check automatically appear in Saga Practice Manager as an expense. You can also do it vice versa. Add an expense in Saga Practice Manager, and have it automatically print out a check in QuickBooks.
The leading scanner application Paperport integrates with Saga and allows you to drag and drop scanned documents from the scanner tray into a particular matter.
| Product Description | Number of Users | Price |
| Saga Practice Manager | 1 | $1,500.00 |
| Saga Practice Manager | 2 | $2,500.00 |
| Saga Practice Manager | 3 | $3,500.00 |
| Saga Practice Manager | 4 | $4,500.00 |
| Saga Practice Manager | 5 | $5,500.00 |
| Saga Practice Manager | 6 | $6,500.00 |
| Saga Practice Manager | 7-500 | Add $600.00 per user |
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Copyright © 2006
Last modified:
November 10, 2006