How Alex Collie of Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers drove better client results and made his practice more efficient with Lexis+^®

Lawyers are passionate about practicing the law, unfortunately, processes and procedures absorb a big portion of their day. Thankfully, technology enables lawyers to do what they do the best – deliver the best results for their clients.

Background

Alex Collie is a Senior Associate at Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers. Like all lawyers, Alex prides himself on his ability to offer a high standard of legal services to his clients. “My goal is to provide a great service,” he says. “And that encompasses giving advice that is good, accurate, and efficient. It’s a sort of trifecta getting those three things and doing them at a cost that works for the client.”

For Alex, that means a lot of time spent trying to improve his own practice and procedures with the right resources and tools whilst ensuring his work is of a high standard. This doubles with his responsibilities in legal operations, where he does the same thing, but figures out how to scale it to the firm at large.

Challenge

Alex’s major frustrations at work revolve around achieving his desired outcomes and being impeded by superfluous processes or obstacles on his journey.

“This manifests in things like getting stuck in certain ways of working,” he says. “I think that happens often in law, people will say ‘this is the way we have to do it’ - but when you look at it, that’s not the case - it’s just been done that way for so long it’s become entrenched.”

Solution & Outcomes

“Work should be as enjoyable as it can be,” says Alex. “And one way of doing that is to use technology to find efficiencies wherever possible, so you can spend more time on the stuff you find mentally stimulating. So spending more time on the the law — rather than trying to get a spreadsheet to work or wondering why I can’t find the information I need.”

Alex has used LexisNexis^® research products for years, and recently tried Lexis+. “Lexis+ is an important iteration of Lexis Advance^®,” he says. “It’s taken a lot of things I’ve already had experience with — and doesn’t change them around so I have to relearn them, but rather makes them more powerful and presents them differently.”

One of the biggest advantages for Alex is the sleek user interface and intuitive search function. “I can start on a  basic search, but then quickly confine searches as I go, to find exactly what I want,” he says. “I get a clear overview on my screen about what I’m looking for and get as much information as possible while still creating less visual clutter than before.”

The removal of visual clutter is key for Alex, as it helps him get to the bottom of issues faster. “Visual clutter doesn’t help with efficiency — especially if you’re doing a lot of research,  You can’t move fast if you’re having trouble finding the right information.” For Alex, less clutter allows him to explore new angles in his research tasks. “The focus and clarity it provides, give me the space to look at things differently, and to go a bit deeper - and in doing that, to uncover things I might otherwise have missed.”

In addition to the appealing user interface and search, Alex finds great the other functionalities of Lexis+. “I think what it does so well is it takes a product that has always been strong and presents those features so they rise above the noise,” he says. “For example, alerts — having the ability to customise alerts to only relate to a particular jurisdiction or dataset is a way to make that feature highly useful when it might otherwise be overwhelming or require manual work. And the integration with the CaseBase^® allows me to quickly see if there’s anything I need to be wary of.”

Alex is unequivocal that Lexis+ helps him to work more efficiently - but he has a slightly different take on what this means for his business than you might expect. “To me, the mark of a good product is not necessarily that it saves time, but rather that it improves results. So I think in some ways, by being more efficient I’m actually working more - but I’m actually finding what I need and putting it to good use.”

He sums up the value of Lexis+ succinctly. “If I was going to describe Lexis+ in just a few words, I’d say it’s intuitive, comprehensive, and clean.”

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