The Convex Group recently experienced rapid expansion through a series of acquisitions, growing quickly to more than 100 employees. Because of this rapid expansion, Convex now manages several subsidiaries and business agreements in several areas. As a result, the company decided to adopt existing technology to help better manage its legal services.

“There were several issues that we wanted to address,” said Bradley Zimmer, General Counsel of Convex. “We wanted to gain more insight into our law firms and better understand our open matters. We previously had no matter management system in place with which to coordinate our legal efforts. Since the majority of our matters, including contracts, litigation, and patents, are deadline driven, it is vitally important that we fully understand the timing of all associated deliverables.”

Additionally, because the company has in-house attorneys in Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles as well as external counsel nationwide, it needed a system that would promote collaboration between these segmented groups.

Convex also wanted to gain more control of its outside counsel by instituting guidelines and accountability, as well as by monitoring its outside counsels’ progress against budgets.

“It’s an inefficient process to manage outside counsel through the review of pages of invoices each month. A paper driven process also makes it hard to determine if outside firms are complying with our authorized budgets and guidelines,” continued Zimmer. “With growing numbers of attorneys and open matters, it was becoming increasingly difficult to review the status of work and associated billings.”

After researching several companies, Convex decided to implement the CT TyMetrix application because of CT TyMetrix’ experience in helping legal departments manage their matters and because the CT TyMetrix 360° system is easily customizable and provided the immediate flexibility needed by The Convex Group.

“Customization was an extremely important criteria as each of our subsidiary companies are distinctive from one another,” continued Zimmer. “We were able to establish work areas in the CT TyMetrix system in a manner that correlates to our organizational structure. We needed each subsidiary’s work area to support the practice areas and matter types unique to that subsidiary.

“Having the ability to create custom fields pertinent to our business has been an invaluable feature. For instance, we were able to create data fields to capture, track and report upon publisher and manufacturing information – data which is critical to Convex’ business but not relevant to many other companies.”

“CT TyMetrix’ expertise was a tremendous asset considering that this was our first matter management implementation. The company helped us through every step of the installation and shared enormously useful advice with us regarding the types of metrics to track and how to segment our matters. We provided CT TyMetrix with our workflow overview, and they set up a finished solution based on the best practices learned from their industry experience. With a few minor tweaks the customized implementation of CT TyMetrix 360° was perfectly in line with our needs and procedures.”

With CT TyMetrix 360° Convex can track its open matters, matter processes and law firm/attorney assignments. The company can also generate meaningful reports with as little or as much detail as their executive officers need.

“The fact that you can view a single matter screen and be presented with the key details and original documents is invaluable,” continued Zimmer. “We can review budgets, the allocation of outside counsel resources and the status of matters with a few mouse clicks.”

In addition to gaining matter transparency, Convex also increased its collaboration among its attorneys. In-house attorneys in different offices can access the system to retrieve legal documents and case information. This central repository eliminates transferring physical files from one location to another; instead they can be easily accessed online.

Convex also gained more visibility into its external law firms, and can now compare firms to those that handle matters more efficiently and within budget.

“We use the CT TyMetrix reporting tools to compare outside counsel invoices with agreed-upon budgets,” continued Zimmer. “We take the data that is captured and use it proactively to make money and time saving decisions. When it’s time to assign new matters, we examine firm performance against budget and most often make new assignments to those firms that are coming in at or under budget.”

In addition to gaining insight into its law firms, control over its ongoing matters and increased collaboration among its attorneys, Convex also utilizes the CT TyMetrix system to manage critical patent and copyright filing deadlines.

“CT TyMetrix helps us manage our patent filing deadlines through the integrated calendar,” said Zimmer. “We enter deadlines in the system and establish alerts to ensure we meet filing dates. We can also see payments that are coming due and be alerted if any deadlines are approaching. Managing these deadlines is critical; Intellectual Property rights are a large component of our business and if filings are late, rights can be forfeited permanently.”

Small companies like Convex may have different needs when it comes to matter management. CT TyMetrix offers a turnkey inhouse legal management solution for companies seeking to control costs, track current or past litigation, track which attorneys are working on which matters, and which firms are operating within budgets.

“We were looking for a system that would fit our unique needs, provide insight into our legal department, and help us establish more productive relationships with our outside counsel. We found that system in CT TyMetrix,” said Zimmer. “Not only can we now capture the multitude of data associated with our matters, but we also have the ability to make crucial business decisions based upon it.”