DESC:FIELD OF INVENTION
[001] This invention relates to system and method for law practice information analysis and management. More particularly, the present invention pertains to tracking information associated with legal cases such as upcoming hearing dates in litigation matters and managing other aspects of legal practice such as billing.
BACKGROUND
[002] Over the last few years India has seen an increase in the number of legal matters especially litigation matters to the extent that the number of pending litigation matters in Courts are pegged at more than 3 crores. Needless to say, litigation has major financial exposure, and requires litigants and lawyers to gather and manage tremendous volumes of detailed information. Also, large companies have continued to downsize their in-house attorneys resulting in fewer attorneys managing larger numbers of legal matters in such companies. The manual method of document and data management is no longer feasible because litigants and lawyers must respond quicker and handle the information efficiently. Much of this data needs to be reused and reanalyzed in subsequent lawsuits.
[003] Existing software products and services aimed at the legal market have attempted to solve this problem by developing independent packages to address only partially some of the specific problems. Individual packages attempting to address those problems, however, must be purchased separately and integrated together to attempt to solve all the information management issues such as services for tracking of cases, billing software, document management software, cloud storage etc. A system made by combining multiple applications does not provide adequate continuity. The data and system integration are archived at the end of each legal matter and the process starts again for the next legal matter.
[004] Thus, there is a need for a comprehensive computer system for improving the process of tracking the varied information concerning people, events, properties and documents gathered and produced over the entire lifecycle of a legal matter. The instant invention provides such a solution.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[005] The present invention is a data analysis product where an integrated software is combined with computer hardware and servers. The system collects information about legal cases which are going to be heard both in present and in the future. The system then makes such cases available to the lawyer to whom those cases pertain both on computer and on handheld devices.
[006] The primary object of the invention is to create a comprehensive practice management and research suite for Lawyers and assist them to organize their legal practice and bring in transparency in the otherwise unorganized legal practice system in India.
[007] It is an object of the invention to provide court proceeding information to the users even when they are on the move including hearing dates, court orders, business details, judgment etc.
[008] Another object of the invention is to consolidate and make legal data and research material available to the lawyers on their handheld devices such as judgment research, trademark search, company and director search, chargesheet search etc.
[009] Ancillary to the primary objectives, it is an also an object of this invention: (i) to reduce the time to search, retrieve, sort, and organize data needed in legal practices; (ii) to have any information requested be returned in a more complete form than results from known methods and systems; (iii) to eliminate duplicative information, thereby reducing or eliminating data update or delete errors; and (iv) to permit data returned from a search request to be instantly available for analysis and reuse on other related legal matters.
[0010] It is further an object of this invention to provide a solution featuring a series of fully integrated components that allow for management of all aspects of a legal matter throughout its entire lifecycle including but not limited to the following components: Docket Management System, including, Client Database, Event/Calendar Database, Billing/Invoicing Database, Document Management System and any combination thereof.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS
[0011] The following detailed description of illustrative embodiments is better understood when read in conjunction with the appended drawings. For the purpose of illustrating the present disclosure, exemplary constructions of the disclosure are shown in the drawings. However, the invention is not limited to specific methods and instrumentalities disclosed herein. Moreover, those in the art will understand that the drawings are not to scale. Wherever possible, like elements have been indicated by identical numbers.
[0012] Figure 1 depicts the work flow of the law practice information analysis and management system in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.
DESCRIPTION
[0013] The following discussion include a general description of a suitable computing environment in which the invention may be implemented. While the invention will be described in the general context of an application program that runs on an operating system in conjunction with a personal computer, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention also may be implemented in combination with other program modules. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. The invention may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
[0014] The invention generally relates to a law practice information analysis and management system. Basic components of an information management system include: all of the software which will create, update, and manage the system, storage devices, processing devices, input/output devices, and network devices and software.
[0015] The invention in one embodiment is a system for law practice information analysis and management including a computer storage medium adapted and configured for storing at least one data structure for storing records selected from the group consisting of docket records, party records, document records, calendar records, financial records, and combinations thereof; a software code portion configured and adapted for adding, deleting, updating, and searching the data structure in the computer storage medium; a general purpose computer for performing server functions operatively connected to the computer storage medium and the software code portion; a network in communication with the general purpose computer, adapted and configured for transmitting add, delete, query, or update requests of the data structure from a client program running on a host computer, operatively connected to the network, to the general purpose computer, and returning responses to the requests from the general purpose computer to the client program; and wherein at least a portion of the system is configured and adapted for data transmissions over the network to or from a web browser or mobile application client.
[0016] In another embodiment of the invention, it includes a system for law practice information analysis and management including: at least one web-accessible database adapted and configured for storing records selected from the group consisting of docket records, party records, document records, calendar records, financial records, and combinations thereof; a web-enabled database management system for adding, deleting, updating, and searching records in the web-accessible database; a server-class general purpose computer for hosting the web-accessible database and the database management system; and a network in communication with the server-class general purpose computer, adapted and configured for transmitting requests using Internet protocols from a web client program running on a host computer on or in communication with the network to the server-class general purpose computer, and returning responses using Internet protocols from the server-class general purpose computer to the web or mobile client program.
[0017] In another embodiment of the invention, it includes a method for law practice information management including: entering into a single database all case information comprising parties, counsel and subject matter; distributing documents in the database over a network to counsel, experts, or advisors; entering into the database all discovery requests, responses, and produced documents; accessing the database in preparing for court hearings, meetings or trials by scheduling events, assigning activities and tasks; accessing the database during trials to present evidence; accessing the database to summarize and analyze cost and billing information; entering into the database any agreements; entering into a client interface search form standard or custom search queries to the database; and wherein at least a portion of the method steps utilize a web browser or mobile application client.
[0018] In one embodiment, the invention method for law practice information analysis and management includes entering into a web interface search form standard or custom search queries to the database. Users can search through most public databases including judgments, trademarks, companies and directors, chargesheet, legal system information etc
[0019] In an exemplary embodiment, the system employs multivaried algorithmic data extraction techniques to discover, extract and homogenize data from court’s cause-lists that present information as PDF documents. Extracted information is homogenized for consumption inside the application. It uniquely and automatically identifies Lawyer's cases and prompt it to the Lawyer for a verified import for future use.
[0020] The disclosed system also provides holistic case history and details which can assist the user to track and take cognitive arguments for each case based on the data analysis.
[0021] The system embodies a unique feature of proximity-based case notification using display board and GPS. A court display board shows the current case in each court room across all high courts and Supreme Court of India. The system of the present invention aggregates the case information from the display board and cause-list and triangulate this data with user’s GPS location on their smartphone or hand-held device to indicate that their case is coming up within an estimated number of minutes.
[0022] Referring now to Figure 1, a flow diagram is presented depicting the process flow for the present method of law practice information analysis and management. As a first step, user enters the name of the case as per causelist. The system creates a digital print of the user cases in the system. The user then starts getting all the updates for the day, such as court hearings, meetings, other work commitments etc. Separately, the user also gets notified of the upcoming hearings and other updates regarding the legal cases. The professional can then update the clients with the information. The new cases also get automatically added to the system and the user starts receiving updates about those cases. The disclosed system also allows the user to do the necessary research within the system itself. The user then appears in court for the matter and can bill the client for such appearance from the system itself.
[0023] Custom information aggregators have been implemented in the system to extract and collate data from all district and high courts in India such as hearing dates, business details during hearing, case detail, court orders and judgment etc.
[0024] The system of the present invention also presents a unique way to store documents, personal notes, appointments against a case and all other case related matter. It includes intelligent algorithm to search, sort, filter, and organize such documents and information as per user requirement.
[0025] Having thus described a few particular embodiments of the invention, various alterations, modifications, and improvements will readily occur to those skilled in the art. Such alteration, modifications, and improvements as are made obvious by this disclosure are intended to be part of this description though not expressly stated herein and are intended to be within the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the foregoing description is by way of example only, and not limiting. ,CLAIMS:We claim:

1. A system for law practice information analysis and management comprising:
(a) a computer storage medium adapted and configured for storing at least one data structure for storing records selected from the group consisting of docket records, party records, property records, document records, calendar records, settlement records, financial records, and mixtures thereof;
(b) a software code portion configured and adapted for adding, deleting, updating, and searching the data structure in the computer storage medium;
(c) a database adapted and configured for storing records selected from the group consisting of docket records, party records, property records, document records, calendar records, settlement records, financial records, and mixtures thereof;
(d) a database management system for adding, deleting, updating, and searching records in the database;
(e) a general-purpose computer for performing server functions and for hosting the database operatively connected to the computer storage medium and the software code portion;
(f) a network in communication with the general-purpose computer, adapted and configured for transmitting add, delete, query, or update requests of the data structure from a client program running on a host computer, operatively connected to the network, to the general purpose computer, and returning responses to the requests from the general purpose computer to the client program; and
(g) wherein at least a portion of the system is configured and adapted for data transmissions over the network to or from a web browser client.
2. A system as claimed in claim 1 wherein the database and database management system are web accessible.
3. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the general-purpose computer is further adapted and configured for transmitting requests using internet protocols from a web client program
4. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the network comprises the Internet.
5. A method for law practice information analysis and management comprising:
(a) entering into a database all case information comprising parties, counsel and subject matter;
(b) distributing documents in the database over a network to counsels;
(c) entering into the database all discovery requests, responses, and produced documents;
(d) accessing the database in preparing for court hearings, meetings or trials by scheduling events, assigning activities and tasks;
(e) accessing the database to summarize and analyze billing information;
(f) entering into the database any settlement offers, counter-offers, and agreements;
(g) entering into a client interface search form standard or custom search queries to the database; and
(h) wherein at least a portion of the method steps utilize a web browser client.
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the network comprises the Internet.
7. The method of claim 5, wherein the system aggregates the case information from the display board and cause-lists of the courts and triangulate this data with user’s GPS location on their smartphone or hand-held device to indicate that their case is coming up within an estimated number of minutes.