Blackfords reduces court bundle production from two days to 20 minutes

Case study: Blackfords LLP

• Offices: London, Cardiff, Croydon & Woking
• Law area focus: Specialists in serious crime and fraud, and high-profile regulatory work
• Uses: Case management and legal accounts software, and Bundledocs
• Employees: 45 solicitors and partners

Interview with: Trevor Francis, Managing Partner, Blackfords LLP

Multi-site Blackfords LLP uses Quill with Bundledocs to create bundles for court in only 20 minutes. Thanks to impressive time and money-saving advantages, Trevor Francis at Blackfords is a staunch supporter of Quill-Bundledocs integration.

The Challenge

Any lawyer tasked with collating bundles for court knows how time-consuming and frustrating it can be; none more so than family solicitors representing complex care cases. That’s according to Trevor Francis.

“In family matters, there are multiple parties involved,” explains Francis. “When preparing for final hearings, there are new documents arriving from all directions to combine into court bundles, right up to the last minute.

“The old-fashioned model meant handling every bundle adjustment manually by photocopying documents and paginating by hand. For complicated family disputes, especially those involving children, bulky court packs could take two days to prepare. Subsequent changes at the eleventh hour were extremely anxiety-inducing at what is already a stressful time.”

The Solution

In its pre-Quill era, Blackfords trialed Adobe Acrobat to streamline court bundling processes.

“Prior to implementing Quill with Bundledocs, we used Acrobat,” continues Francis. “There were two main problems with this solution – cost and knowledge. Lots of both were needed and, in our practice, both were lacking.”

It wasn’t long before Blackfords turned to Quill.

“Since installing Quill’s case management and legal accounts system, and integrating fully and seamlessly with Bundledocs, we’ve lowered our overheads and decreased pack assembly time markedly,” says Francis. “Quill is simultaneously affordable and easy to use. Even the non-techies in our team can drag and drop files into bundles, index and paginate in 20 minutes or less with later amendments actioned in seconds.”

The Future

By introducing digital procedures, Blackfords is now aiming to become a completely paperless office by 2022.

“Quill provides our entire back-office infrastructure,” concludes Francis. “We’ve moved wholesale to Quill’s software which has undergone a transformational overhaul over the past few years. To use an analogy, it’s mutated from duckling to swan. It’s the enabler of our paperless working vision, which we hope to achieve by the end of this calendar year. Added to this, the people at Quill are friendly, responsive, and willing to act outside of their remit to help clients.”

Find out more on Quill-Bundledocs integration by visiting www.quill.co.uk/legal-software/electronic-court-bundling-software, emailing info@quill.co.uk or calling 0161 236 2910.