Changing the legal aid game

We would love to tell you that we are announcing that your legal aid payments are going to increase significantly for all your hard work. However, we believe this might be the next best thing… maybe!

We are delighted to announce that SLAB Online now integrates with our legal case management software platform, CaseLoad. It has taken a lot of hard work from both Denovo and the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) to make this happen, and finally, it’s here.

We are confident that many of the frustrations legal aid lawyers find when uploading files to SLAB will now be a thing of the past. With immediate effect, SLAB Online will now accept an account as a case management option. Within our CaseLoad software platform, we have introduced a new method of submitting a legal aid account to SLAB. Using the SLAB integration option, you can submit work items from time-recorded entries in CaseLoad directly to SLAB and request payment. How good is that!

All it takes is four easy steps:

1. Record your time entries in CaseLoad as normal to create your work in progress.
2. Using the SLAB integration option, you can submit work items to SLAB and request payment.
3. SLAB will assess the account and respond with an offer of payment.
4. The option is there to negotiate or accept the offer from SLAB.

Putting the integration to the test

We have been trialling the integration with some of our key legal aid clients, all of whom have welcomed the integration with open arms.

Leila Katani, office manager at Katani & Co Solicitors said (very enthusiastically!): “When we heard the SLAB integration with Denovo was ready, it really made our day. We had a short demo and to be honest it was so simple I really did think it was too good to be true, but it is just that simple to use. Manually inputting accounts can be extremely time-consuming and a drain on resources, so the fact that we can automate the process using our case management system, CaseLoad, with the upload feature, really is a game changer for us. We still rerecord our time entries in CaseLoad as normal to create our work in progress. But, now using the SLAB integration option we can submit work items to SLAB direct from CaseLoad and request payment, reducing a huge amount of duplication in work. I would genuinely go as far to say that this is one of the most significant timesaving software features that Denovo have ever introduced for legal aid firms.”

Euan MacKay, partner at McGlashan MacKay Solicitors added: “The SLAB integration with CaseLoad means that the days of copying and pasting work items on to SLAB Online are finally over. For large files, we would spend almost a full day going through a pretty laborious admin process. Having the ability to raise the fee straight over has changed a full day’s work into literally a few minutes. This type of integration with our case management system has been a long time coming and we are delighted it’s finally here.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!

We are honestly delighted at the reaction so far. We will continue to roll out the integration to our existing legal aid law firm partners and look forward to sharing the time-saving benefits and efficiencies with many more Scottish law firms. Plus, we are going to continue to work closely with the Scottish Legal Aid Board to make lawyers’ lives even easier.

Breaking ground

We can’t control the Legal Aid Board or any challenges you face there. We’re not here to break down barriers either. But we are here to introduce groundbreaking features within our software that can streamline your processes. And SLAB have been very supportive in helping us make this integration the best it can be.

We’re in the business of supporting you to run your firm, so you can spend more time doing what you do best – representing your clients and being the best lawyer you can be.

In short, our software, CaseLoad, provides a set of tools for the fee earners and support staff to undertake administrative tasks more effectively. This includes time recording and billing, court diary management, case bundle preparation, document production, document management, legal accounts, outsourced Cashroom and at last, an integration with SLAB Online.

Having the right, user friendly, software in place provides you with the financial and administrative tools needed to manage cases and make life that little bit easier.

If you’re a legal aid lawyer and would like to talk to us about how you can utilise CaseLoad to improve your practice performance, get in touch with grant@denovobi.com, visit denovobi.com or call us on 0141 331 5290.