Practice Management and Case Management Systems
This domain tests the platform layer: how practice management, case management, and document systems hold matter data, time, billing, calendars, and documents, and how configuration affects reporting and control.
Core concepts
- Practice management covers clients, matters, time, billing, accounting, and trust. Case management covers case data, deadlines, docketing, tasks, and documents. Document management covers documents and versions. Integration is the point.
- Data model: client, matter, contacts, tasks, time, and documents, with unique identifiers and no duplicate records.
- Roles and permissions: least privilege, ethical walls, need-to-know.
- Docketing: court and jurisdiction rules, trigger dates, calculated deadlines, and independent verification.
- Configuration: fields should serve intake and reporting; avoid excessive customization; apply change control and testing.
Worked example
A firm wants a 'matter risk' field. Free text cannot be aggregated reliably. Correct design: a controlled picklist with defined values, an owner, a null option, and mapping from intake. Reasoning: reportable data must be structured at entry; cleaning free text downstream is costly and error-prone.
Traps
Duplicate client records; using matter description as a data field; custom fields without governance; ignoring jurisdiction-specific docket rules; trust accounting errors; integrations that fail silently.