Flagship Homes are a leading Housing Association providing accommodation across the East of England. Flagship own and manage about 22,000 homes. Over the last few years James McCulloch has been building an in-house legal team which handles property, commercial and civil litigation (mainly debt collection) work. The existing team of Anti-Social Behaviour Officers also joined the Legal Team to aid collaborative working and litigation reduction. at the team work across various office and on site locations, so ability to work remotely is essential. The system had to be cloud based.

We managed and delivered the Implementation Project for Flagship’s in-house legal team of their new Case Management System. We have assisted about 300 firms with implementations of their Case Management Systems and then provide ongoing support and assistance to our client base (private practice & in-house).

Whilst some find working with in-house teams difficult, our lead consultant, Ingemar Hunnings, comments that he enjoys working with in-house teams. One has to invert a lot of assumptions that one would have for a private practice. For example – who are the clients? In fact, they are the commissioning areas of the business which are calling on the resource that the in-house team provide. Normally the in-house legal team are regarded as an overhead. As such it is important for them to be able to track which parts of the business/group/local authority etc are calling on that resource – so they can see if some are over-using them. This may provide an indication of other issues and resourcing considerations. Proper record keeping and use of reporting will assist in budgeting going forward.

We started with a detailed Project Planning phone call with James, followed by an on-site Project Planning Meeting with James and his management team when goals were explored and the project was planned and mapped out.

The software was installed on the necessary computers and tested.

The first training day was for the senior management team. As well as training on how to use the software – both the Case Management, the Bookkeeping and how to create and amend precedents, we also went through the reporting functions. Our approach at HCL is not to just train on how to use the software, but also to explore with the client how it might best be used to enhance how the management can improve how the business works. This is consulting work. Nearly all we do boils down to: Profit Improvement & Risk Management. We spent a lot of time looking at the goals for the legal department and then how they wished to achieve them and how the system could be best used to reach those goals – both short term and longer term.

After this we assisted the management team with the re-examination of policies and processes in the light of the functionality of the new software before the roll out software to the staff.

Following on from that were a series of interactive training sessions where we trained each team. After this we provided floor-walking, desk-side and follow up training to ensure that the learning was embedded. We worked with the software provider to ensure an introduction to their Client Success Team and have continued to provide support to the Flagship Legal Team. We also provide ongoing support and assistance. We always work towards an ongoing relationship with our clients to help them grow and thrive.