How to implement Hivelight or run a pilot for your firm

Hivelight offers a flexible and collaborative platform to streamline caseload management for law firms. This article outlines the process and next steps for implementing Hivelight or setting up a pilot to trial Hivelight with your team.

The process for running a pilot is essentially a partial implementation. Implementation simply requires completing steps 2 and 3 simultaneously or in sequence for all the other teams in the firm.

(a) Select team members from various roles (e.g., lawyers, operations, paralegals) who are motivated to improve current processes. This variety ensures that the needs and priorities of each group are represented and that we have a member of each group who can train their colleagues.

(b) Ensure that managers allocate time for this project (adjusting billable KPIs if necessary) for each member of the Project Team. If the demand on their time remains the same, they won’t be able to give proper time and attention to the project and its success will be compromised.

The responsibilities of the Project Team include:

Choose a team that is managing a specific caseload or set of matters.

Hivelight is a collaborative platform (assigning tasks, tagging each other in notes, automated reporting based on user activity etc). Getting the proper benefit from it requires the whole team to use it to manage their caseload together.

In our experience, it works best to get Hivelight “looking the part” before introducing people to it who are outside the Project Team. This means setting up the matters to reflect their current state and building some basic workflows that enable people to quickly populate matters with common tasks and milestones.

(a) Project team sets up the caseload in Hivelight (approx. 2 weeks).

(b) Create initial workflows (basic outlines to start with a few milestones and core tasks - Hivelight workflows are easy to flesh out over time as needed, so start quick and simple).

(c) Introduce pilot team to Hivelight, guiding them through:

Training the Pilot Team should involve attending team meetings with them and using Hivelight with them to complete the work in those meetings (e.g. reviewing matters, adding tasks, adding notes etc, and showing people how they can use Hivelight to filter and prioritise their workload).

Note that you can check that people are using Hivelight by going to ‘Reports’ > ‘Users’ in Hivelight.

Duration

If running a Hivelight pilot, allow about 2 weeks for your Project Team to setup the matters and workflows (assuming that they are having to complete this alongside their existing workload). Then allow at least 4 weeks to the Pilot Team to be introduced to Hivelight, provided training, and taken through using it to manage their caseload together.

Hivelight comes with a range of out of the box integrations with Outlook and popular practice management systems.

Our ‘variables’ feature enables you to add dynamic links to your Hivelight workflows that are handy with pairing Hivelight with apps such as document management (e.g. OneDrive) and document generation (e.g. Smarterdrafter) solutions.

You can use our open API (yes we have tutorials and videos) to create automations between Hivelight and other apps that you use.

If we don’t have an integration with your preferred platform, ask us. New deals are often the motivator to expand our suite of built-in integrations (our developers like to build things that customers are sure to use).

1. Identify your Project Team (at least 2-3 people from operations, legal and support roles).

2. Select your Pilot Team and their caseload.

3. Schedule a planning meeting with Hivelight support and the Project Team to kick things off.

4. Sign up for Hivelight.

Email: support@hivelight.com

Meeting: Book a meeting