CASE STUDY
Improving accuracy and versility
How a law firm with iManage encouraged more PTO for its team and left rejected eFilings in the past.
Firm
Nemecek & Cole
Practice area
Legal malpractice
Employees
29
Location
Encino, CA
When SoCal law firm Nemecek & Cole made the shift to eFiling in 2021, firm assistant administrator Sarah Navarro says the midsized legal practice faced one major point of friction – multiple rejected filings.
The culprit behind the numerous rejections?
According to Navarro, the main reason was that their eFiling process was not connected directly to iManage, Nemecek & Cole’s document and email management system.
Without a direct link to iManage, Navarro and her team were forced to save multiple versions of PDF documents onto their computer hard drives. The result of this rudimentary process made it difficult to ensure they were submitting their filings with the correct, up-to-date versions of their documents.
“You think you’re submitting the right document because that’s what you thought you saved it as,” Navarro says. “But since it’s not coming through iManage as your final document, there’s always room for error.”
Navarro adds it was common for her firm to submit obsolete drafts of court documents that were missing important pages or required signatures.
When the court received these incorrect drafts, they would reject the filings, delaying the case and requiring a scramble to rectify the issues.
Sarah Navarro
Assistant Administrator
‘It’s a great value’ – Optimizing productivity
To improve quality control over the eFiling process at Nemecek & Cole, Navarro and her firm made a crucial pivot to InfoTrack’s iManage integration.
Gaining the ability to generate and eFile court documents directly from her firm’s document management system, Navarro recognizes three immediate benefits of InfoTrack’s automated eFiling solution:
- Reliable eFiling Automation – The first benefit attracting Navarro and her firm to InfoTrack was its seamless automation with iManage. This automation enabled them to import the final versions of PDFs and client information from their document management system.
Upon switching to InfoTrack’s integration with iManage, Nemecek & Cole gained the ability to ensure the PDFs they submitted were the correct versions they created within their document management system. They could also complete and finalize the required eFiling forms automatically using client data.
Streamlined Workflows – As with many attorneys, administrators, paralegals, and assistants, the one thing Navarro and her colleagues focused on the most was completing their work as efficiently as possible.
The law firm’s drive for efficiency slowed down when it came to eFiling before InfoTrack. The cumbersome interface and multi-page digital forms used by their previous system posed a challenge for Nemecek & Cole.
Enabling users to input all necessary case information on one simple page, InfoTrack sped up the eFiling process for Nemecek & Cole. The automated eFiling solution also reduced mistakes caused by manually re-keying the same information on the multiple form pages their previous solution required for the same orders.
“It’s all on one page, and we’re submitting then and there,” Navarro says. “We’re not going ‘next’ and ‘next’ and clicking on a bunch of different pages to get where we need to be.”
- Increased Versatility – Another factor that impacted productivity at Nemecek & Cole was when Navarro or her coworkers would leave the office for PTO or vacation. With the main filer out of the office, it was difficult to track the status of court documents.
With InfoTrack’s ability to monitor the progress of court documents from inception to acceptance, Navarro says this improved Nemecek & Cole’s ability to hand off matters from one team member to another, freeing her colleagues to enjoy their lives outside of work.
“It’s a great value because you don’t go looking for things,” Navarro says. “You’re not having to search or find someone or call somebody at their home and have them log into their accounts.
“You can just have one snapshot.”
KEY RESULTS
Fewer Rejected Filings
The ability to create and eFile PDF's directly from iManage erases the need for saving documents onto a desktop, which means Nemecek & Cole no longer attach the wrong versions of court documents to their orders.
Greater Efficiency
InfoTrack's streamlined approach to eFiling processes requires fewer forms (and clicks) to submit court documents, which also means fewer mistakes.
Stress-Free PTO
Using InfoTrack's Orders dashboard, Nemecek & Cole can monitor the status of eFiling orders submitted by anyone on their team, giving employees greater freedom to focus on their lives outside of the office.
“Being able to import documents directly from iManage, whether it’s in their final form or making them into the final form with InfoTrack, it’s just been the best decision.”
“It’s always been handled really quickly and efficiently” – Other key benefits
Aside from the improved productivity and overall collaboration that its automated eFiling service created for her firm, Navarro praised InfoTrack’s online customer service.
“If you have an issue or a problem with a filing, it’s always been handled really quickly and really efficiently,” Navarro says.
She appreciates the added security and streamlined invoice processing of InfoTrack Pays, a payment service that covers upfront costs of the court filing, convenience, and service fees.
InfoTrack takes care of the upfront costs, leaving Navarro and her firm to pay a monthly invoice instead of individual fees on a per-filing basis.
Navarro loves the benefit of paying eFiling costs both monthly and on her own terms.
“InfoTrack has worked with us on an invoice being in the format we wanted and it’s working great!” Navarro says. “It’s nice that no account is on hold because of payment options. That was a problem in years past with other services, but we don’t have to worry about that with InfoTrack.”
Conclusion: ‘Basically a no-brainer.’
Making the shift to InfoTrack for Nemecek & Cole’s eFiling needs empowered Navarro and her colleagues to address the challenges they had with accuracy, optimized workflows, and collaboration.
The integration also helped extend the value of iManage in order to provide better service to the law firm’s clients.
“It was basically a no-brainer,” Navarro says. “Being able to import documents directly from iManage, whether it’s in their final form or making them into the final form with InfoTrack, it’s just been the best decision.”