Bringing Hi-Tech Docket Calendaring to the Nation's Premier Hi-Tech Law Firm

by Roy Murai, MIS Director
Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati

"To say that the automated system has been accepted by the firm would be an understatement. Before we automated our system with CompuLaw, our docket department was calendaring a few hundred events (obviously many people weren't even using the docket department!). Today the docket department is calendaring 15,000 events!"

The law firm of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati has become synonymous with excellence in legal matters involving high technology -- from transactions and litigations to intellectual property and patents.

But when I joined the firm in early 1993, there was one area in which the firm remained notably non hi-tech: The calendaring of docket dates and deadlines. Indeed, I was hired away from McCutcheon Doyle in San Francisco specifically to help automate the firm's docketing system.

What I found when I joined Wilson Sonsini was commonplace at many large law firms at the time: the docket department calculated the dates and deadlines manually, inputting information in a WordPerfect document for dissemination as the calendar. In my view and in the firm's, this methodology was extremely inefficient and potentially dangerous because manual systems are time consuming, error prone and thus vulnerable to legal malpractice claims. (More than half of all legal malpractice claims stem from missed dates and deadlines.)

Each week, the docket department issued a single docket calendar for all Wilson, Sonsini lawyers that sometimes ran up to 50 pages long. To find the dates they needed, lawyers, paralegals and secretaries had to scour the weekly calendar in search of listings involving them, which could be identified by the attorneys' initials which followed each listing. This centralized calendar was so cumbersome that some of the staff simply didn't use it, relying instead solely on their own calculations to schedule their calendars in accordance with the rules of the courts.

Without question, the Wilson, Sonsini system was ripe for improvement. Not only were both of its systems manual, one of them was being underutilized because it was too unwieldy. Clearly an automated docket calendar system was the best solution.

The question was, what docket software would best meet Wilson, Sonsini's needs? When we researched the docketing software marketplace, we found enormous differences between calendaring programs. Some provide great protection against missed dates and deadlines. Others provide virtually none. After much research, we determined that the following features were critical in a docketing software that would calculate dates and deadlines accurately and thus provide real protection against malpractice claims:

	Automatic Date Scheduling. The program had to be able to schedule events based on court rules. Once a key date was entered, the program had to calculate all related dates, no matter how complex or multifaceted. The program had to be able to learn court rules to make these calculations.
	Court Rules Ready. The program had to permit both easy programming of court rules and be able to use sets of pre-programmed court rules. This would enable users to either program the rules into their system themselves or buy pre-programmed rules and customize them.
	Data Validation. To provide the high level of security required in the scheduling of attorneys' dockets, the program had to have a meaningful way to prevent errors in the entry of data. It would be disastrous to inadvertently have two schedules running for the same case based on mistaken data entry. If a client was named Edward Jones, Inc., for instance, the software needed to be able to validate data so that if the name Ed Jones was entered, it didn't erroneously assume that this was a different client or matter. The program needed to give the attorney the confidence of knowing that the case schedule he is examining is the one and only case schedule in existence.
	Holiday Scheduling. The software had to be able to accept holiday schedules for many jurisdictions, not a single, generic holiday schedule. That is because different courts have different scheduling rules regarding holidays, and the system had to be able to adjust deadlines accordingly.
	Group Scheduling. Particularly with a law firm like ours where complex litigation is commonplace, the system had to be able to schedule multiple teams of timekeepers.
	Automatic Reminder. The software had to be able to repeatedly remind attorneys of upcoming events or deadlines. Preferably users would be able to schedule reminders as frequently as they wanted. The program should also remind entire groups of timekeepers of upcoming events.
	Retroactive Event Recalculation. Because rules and events change, the program needed to be able to recalculate all related dates based on those changes.

Based on these requirements, Wilson Sonsini quickly narrowed the competitive programs to two, and selected CompuLaw's Advanced/Network Docket. (NetDoc is CompuLaw's DOS-based application. CompuLaw recently released its Windows version, Vision Docket, to which we intend to migrate soon.)

[Note: Since this writing, Wilson Sonsini has upgraded to Vision Docket, CompuLaw's Calendar/Docket program for Windows.]

NetDoc [and Vision Docket] offers all the features listed above and more, and a customizable report feature that we felt would be invaluable. This feature lets us create reports containing precisely the information we want. Over time this has proved to be a remarkably important feature because attorneys need calendars containing information they need and they tend to use our automated system because  we can produce them.

From the outset I found NetDoc easy to use, efficient and extraordinarily smart -- that is, it can "learn" multiple rule sets, from the local court, the state, the firm, etc, and it can apply those rules appropriately based on their pre-defined importance. (If a firm rule conflicts with a court rule, for instance, the court rule supersedes.) Moreover, CompuLaw offers the nation's most extensive Library of Court Rules available (all of them are edited by attorneys), and this gives docket departments and other users great flexibility in determining whether to create their own rules sets or customize CompuLaw's. (CompuLaw is presently expanding its library to include rule sets for every state. It also has begun making its rules available to other case management programs so that automated calendaring will be available to more and more law firms.)

The automated CompuLaw system has become the dominant docketing system in the firm. Each week, we create four weeks of calendars for each attorney. When a trial or arbitration date is set in any matter, we create an individual calendar of events for that matter. And of course these reports are created with precisely the information the attorney's request.

To say that the automated system has been accepted by the firm would be an understatement. Before we automated our system with CompuLaw, our docket department was calendaring a few hundred events (obviously many people weren't even using the docket department!). Today the docket department is calendaring 15,000 events!

While lawyers and paralegals continue to calculate their own calendars at Wilson, Sonsini, this practice appears to have become the backup. As it should. With NetDoc calculations, recalculations, changes, additions -- they are all virtually instantaneous.

And when lawyers and paralegals check their calculations against ours generated with NetDoc, our calculations invariably prove to be the right ones!

This article originally appeared in Law Products™ magazine, and is reprinted with their permission. Reprints are available from CompuLaw upon request.

(Roy Murai is the MIS Director at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati.)